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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



A NEW NATION 



CENTURY READINGS 

IN 
UNITED STATES HISTORY 

A series, made up from the best on this subject 
in The Century and St. Nicholas, for students 
of the upper grammar grades and the first year 
high school. Profusely illustrated. 

EXPLORERS AND SETTLERS 

THE COLONISTS AND THE REVOLUTION 

A NEW NATION 

THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

THE CIVIL WAR 

THE PROGRESS OF A UNITED PEOPLE 

12mo. About 225 pages each. $.50 net. 

THE CENTURY CO. 




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CENTURY READINGS IN UNITED STATES HISTORY 



A NEW NATION 



EDITED BY 



CHARLES L. ^ARSTOW 




NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 

1912 



ESdl 
■~BlS 



Copyright, 191 2, by 
The Century Co 



Pub lis lied March, jgis 



4 'S^ 

€ CI.A309841 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Washington at Mount Vernon After the Revolution 

Constance C. Harrison - . . 3 
The Inauguration of Washington 

Clarence IV. Bozven . . . . i8 

How We Bought Louisiana . Helen L. Coffin 25 

The Last Conquistador . . . E. S. Brooks 30 

Causes of the War (1812) . . President James Madison . . 43 
Laurels of the American Tar in 181 2 

Edgar S. Maclay . ; . . . 47 

The, Battle of New Orleans . Theodore Roosevelt .... 62 

The Star-Spangled Banner 68 

Robbers of the Seas .... Ernest Ingersoll yz 

Old Georgetown . . ... . John W. Palmer 86 

Robert Fulton and the Clermont 

Alice Crary Sutcliire .... 95 
The Missions of Alta California 

John T. Doyle 106 

Pioneer Spanish Families in California 

Charles H. Shinii 122 

Osceola . Major-General O. O. Hozuard . 130 

The Early Life of Daniel Webster 

John B. McMaster . . . .138 
Webster as the Defender of the Constitution 

John B. McMaster . . . .148 

Old New York and Its Building Richard G. JVJiite 160 

The Early Life of Lincoln . . Helen Nicolay 166 

My Escape from Slavery . . Frederick Douglass . . . ,181 

vii 



viii Contents 

PAGE 

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates . Frederick T. Hill i86 

A Douglas Argument .... Stephen A. Douglas .... 199 

The Author of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " 

Richard Burton 203 



Acknowledgment is made of the courtesy of Messrs. D. Appleton & Company for 
permission to use the poem " Oh, Mother of a Mighty Race." 



A NEW NATION 



" OH, MOTHER OF A MIGHTY RACE " 

Oh, mother of a mighty race, 
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace ! 
The elder dames, thy haughty peers. 
Admire and hate thy blooming years. 

With words of shame 
And taunts of scorn they join thy name. 

For on thy cheeks the glow is spread 
That tints thy morning hills with red; 
Thy step — the wild deer's rustling feet 
Within thy woods are not more fleet ; 

Thy hopeful eye 
Is bright as thine own sunny sky. 

Ay, let them rail — those haughty ones, 
While safe thou dwellest with thy sons. 
They do not know how loved thou art, 
How many a fond and fearless heart 

Would rise to throw 
Its life between thee and the foe. 

Oh, fair young mother ! on thy brow 
Shall sit a nobler grace than now. 
Deep in the brightness of the skies 
The thronging years in glory rise, 

And, as they fleet, 
Drop strength and riches at thy feet. 

William Cullen Bryant. 

From the Poems of William Cullen Bryant, by courtesy of D. Appleton and 
Company. 



A NEW NATION 



WASHINGTON AT MOUNT VERNON AFTER 
THE REVOLUTION 

By Constance Gary Harrison 

There are two seasons of the year when the hilly shores 
of the Lower Potomac River become an earthly paradise, 
wherein, till summer heats return to coax him from his lair, 
the serpent of malaria lies torpid and restrained from active 
demonstration. One of them is the late autumn^ after frost 
has set the woods afire and filled the pale red globes of the 
tricksy persimmon with luscious sweetness. Then the 
sleepy sun lingers upon the landscape, loath to leave, and 
life is a delight. The other " time of joyance " is in early 
spring, when the swelling slopes on each side the broad 
silver river are first reclad in verdure. Who, that has ever 
known it, can forget the jubilee of Nature in Virginia's 
woods in April — the self assertion of every growing thing 
in whose green veins the sap is running; the riotous blos- 
soming of trees and shrubs close of kin to Virginia's soil, 
and nurtured accordingly by the Virginian climate; the 
singing of innumerable birds? 

Viewed from the high ground around Mount Vernon, 
and from the openings in the wood-road along which, just 
a century ago, Washington was wont to take his daily 
gallops, the scene that met his eyes was as fair as man could 
ask to look upon. Many acres of the wide, rolling country 

3 



A New Nation 




The Old Entrance to Mount Vernon. 



were his own, and 
for years had known 
his care. Hither, 
while in camp or 
afield, throughout 
the turmoil of war, 
his fancy had con- 
tinually turned. All 
the poetry of his 
self-contained nature 
went out to these fa- 
miliar haunts. None 
of the more grandi- 
ose scenery in West- 
ern solitudes, nothing 
he had seen while in command of the army, had dis- 
turbed his dream of Mount Vernon sitting like a queen 
enthroned on grassy hilltops, her feet laved by the beautiful 
Potomac. Good to look at still when in the saddle was he 
whom Lafayette thus described, long after the brave 
knight was dust : " Our beloved chief, mounted on a splen- 
did charger, rode along the ranks at Monmouth amid the 
shouts of the soldiers, and I thought I had never seen so 
superb a man." Jefferson, too, spoke of him in a letter to 
Dr. Walter Jones, as " the best horseman of his age, and the 
most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback." 

Although somewhat faded was the huntsman's bravery 
of blue and scarlet worn in the gala-days of yore, the man 
inside of it sat with the old ease upon his fiery " Blue-skin " 
— Will Lee, on " Chinkling," closely following. These 
two rode straight forward, over brake and brier, from sun- 
rise, when the gray fox of Virginia was unkenneled, till — 



Washington at Mount Vernon 



5 



no matter what hour 
— the fate of her lady- 
ship was settled and her 
followers drew rein be- 
fore one house or the 
other of their belong- 
ings, to seek pot-luck. 
Custis says that Wash- 
ington required of a 
horse " but one good 



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Main hall as it is to-day. 



quality, and that was 
to go along. He ridiculed the idea that he could be un- 
horsed, provided the animal kept on his legs." . . . 

Of Washington's neighbors, one of the most important, 
still living within easy reach of Mount Vernon, was George 
Mason of Gunston Hall, a patriot of the finest type, the 
author of that noble paper, " The Virginia Bill of Rights," 
and who in the intervals of distinguished service in the Con- 
tinental Congress returned to his home on the Potomac. 
To this old manor-house of the Masons, built in 1739, of 
Scotch brick brought to the colony as ballast in empty 
tobacco-ships, and richly ornamented with wood carvings, 

the Washington fam- 
ily was accustomed to 
resort for tea-drinkings 
and " dining-days," re- 
turned in kind before 
the week was out. 

To the lover of old 
times and houses it may 
be of interest to know 
that Gunston Hall still 

Fireplace in the old kitchen. 




A New Nation 



stands, although no longer in possession of the Mason fam- 
ily. The ancient tobacco fields that surround it are now 
blossoming with the April snow of apple, peach, and pear 
trees; and some of the Potomac boats stop at Gunston Land- 
ing, below Alexandria, to take on to Washington the excel- 
lent milk, cream, and poultry for which Fairfax County 
farmers are renowned. Indeed, this business is a survival 
of the days when Washington set his neighbors a good 
example by running a market cart between Mount Vernon 
and the town. *' These old Alexandrians," says Parson 
Weems, " filled their coach-houses with gilt carriages and 
their dining-rooms with gilt glasses, and then sat down to 
a dinner of salt meat and johnny-cake," because nobody had 
been found to furnish supplies for the market. 

Good reason had M. Brissot de Warville, the traveler and 
author (the " brisk little Frenchman " who became chief of 
the Girondists and died by the guillotine in 1793), to cry 
out in astonishment at the general's success in farming, when 
he went the rounds of Mount Vernon in the autumn of 1788. 
The estates were then at the highest pitch of improvement 
they ever attained, crops of wheat, tobacco, corn, barley, and 

buckwheat " burdening 
ground.' 



the ground." What 
excited the French- 
man's chief surprise 
was that every barn 
and cabin, grove and 
clearing, field and or- 
chard, passed daily be- 
neath the eye of the 
master. All the busy 
life of the negro world 




Music room. 



Washington at Mount Vernon 




Banquet hall restored. 



was regulated by his 
personal directions to 
overseers and bailiff. 
No item was too insig- 
nificant to bring before 
his notice. . . 

In the summer of 
1788 we find Washing- 
ton endeavoring to cap- 
ture or buy a healthy 
family of opossums to 
export alive to his friend Sir Edward Newenham (*' exotic 
animals " these must have proved to the English climate) ; 
George Fairfax proposes to send him English deer. 
Washington's care of his horses is too well known to need 
mention here. One ceremony of his daily round — for, rain 
or shine, he made the circuit of his farms, between twelve 
and fifteen miles — was, in season, never omitted by the 
chief. It was to lean over the fence around the field wherein 
a tall old sorrel horse, with white face and legs, was graz- 
ing luxuriously in the richest grass and clover Mount Vernon 
could afford. At the sight of him the old steed would prick 
up his ears and run neighing to arch his neck beneath his 
master's hand. This was " Nelson," the war-horse, upon 
whose back, at Yorktown, the Commander-in-chief of the 
American armies had received the surrender of Lord Corn- 
wallis. The war ended, " Nelson's " work was over. 
Turned out to graze in summer, in winter carefully groomed 
and stabled, he lived to a good old age, but by his master's 
strict command, was never again allowed to feel the burden 
of a saddle. 

These stories are familiar enough to dwellers in and about 



8 A New Nation 

Alexandria, who, as the common saying goes, were " brought 
up on " General Washington. My own early views of the 
great man and his family were tinged with familiarity 
through hearing them discussed across the table as if they 
still lived within driving distance. Some of the features of 
Mount Vernon life here revived were depicted by my grand- 
mother and great-aunts, whose mother, Mrs. Herbert of 
Alexandria, was often asked, after the liberal fashion of 
the State, to fetch a coach-load of her offspring for a " stay- 
ing visit " to the Washingtons. 

In the happy years when Washington had settled down, as 
he believed and hoped, " to pass an unclouded evening after 
the stormy day of life," the house was greatly altered. Re- 
stored and extended. Mount Vernon was filled with trophies 
and souvenirs of its owner's glory. Even the grand mantel- 
piece of Italian marble in the chief parlor had been sent by 
an admirer of the general in London, together with two vases 
of old blue Indian porcelain. But the habits of his family 
were unchanged, remaining always on the unostentatious 
old Virginian lines. After an early breakfast Madam 
Washington, a stout, kindly dame, wearing in winter home- 
spun, in summer a gown of crisp white dimity, went to her 
storeroom. " My dear old grandfather " (the late G. W. P. 
Custis, Esq., of Arlington House), writes Miss Mildred Lee 
*' used to tell me, when I ran in from play with a dirty frock 
at Arlington, that his grandmamma, Mrs. Washington, 
wore always one white gown a week, and that when she 
took it off it was as spotless as the day she put it on." 

A mob-cap covering her gray hair, and key-basket in hand, 
the wife of Washington must have offered a pleasant pic- 
ture of the days when housekeepers were not ashamed to 
weigh their own supplies, and butchers' books and lounging, 



Washington at Mount Vernon 9 

grocers' boys were not. In their stead were seen the black 
cook and her myrmidons, smiling, gogghng, courtesying, 
holding their wooden pails and " piggins " to receive the 
day's allowance. If there were a " sugar loaf '" to crack, a 
tall glittering monument like an aiguille of the Alps, emer- 
ging stainless from its dark-blue wrapper, it was the mistress 
of the house who brought her strength to bear on it; there 
were " whips " and " floating-islands " and jellies to com- 
pound ; and to " tie down " the preserves was no small piece 
of work. 

The rites of the storeroom at an end, it was Mrs. Wash- 
ington's practice to retire to her closet for the exercises of 
private devotions. Afterwards the house was opened to 
visits from the " quarter." Disputes were settled, eggs and 
chickens bought at the valuation of the seller, advice and 
medicine given to a succession of grown-up children — a 
family, varying in hue from tawny brown to the black of 
darkness visible, the care of whose health and welfare, how- 
ever onerous, was accepted as naturally by generations of 
Southern housewives as was the responsibility for their own 
flesh and blood. 

This business of reception went on intermittently during 
the morning hours ; but it is not to be supposed that Madam 
Washington sat with idle hands the while. Scattered about 
the room were black women engaged in work that must be 
overlooked; Flavia cutting out innumerable garments of 
domestic cotton for " quarter " use, Sylvia at her seam, 
Myrtilla at her wheel — not to mention the small dark crea- 
tures with wool betwigged, perched upon crickets round 
about the hearth, learning to sew, to mend, to darn, with 
" ole miss " for a teacher. During the late war Mrs. 
Washington's boast had been that she had kept as many as 




The old Family Tomb at Mount Vernon. 



Washington at Mount Vernon 1 1 

sixteen wheels at a time whirring on the plantation. A fa- 
vorite gown had been woven by her maids, of cotton, striped 
with silk procured by raveling the general's discarded stock- 
ings, and enlivened by a line of crimson from some worn- 
out chair-covers of satin damask. 

Everybody looked forward to the evening when the gen- 
eral sat with them. This was the children's hour, when by 
the uncertain twinkle of homemade candles, lighting but 
dimly the great saloon, while their elders turned trumps 
around the card-table, the young people were called to show 
their steps, to strum their pieces, to sing their quavering lit- 
tle songs. The curled darling of the house was " Master " 
Washington. Lafayette, during his last visit to America, 
told Mr. G. W. P. Custis he had seen him first on the portico 
at Mount Vernon in 1784 — " a very little gentleman with 
a feather in his hat, holding fast to one finger of the good 
general's remarkable hand, which (so large that hand) was 
all, my dear sir, you could well do at the time ! " . . . 

I do not purpose to enter into details about what we in the 
South call " family company " at Mount Vernon. As well 
attempt to impose upon an unoffending public a table of 
Virginian genealogy. Friends may come and go, but cousins 
go on forever in our State. Kinsmen there were who rode 
up to the gate, hallooed for grooms, and stabled their steeds 
with unshaken confidence in their own acceptability. Second 
cousins once removed unpacked their bandboxes in the 
square chambers. Pretty Dandridges and Custises and 
Washingtons put on their patches before the high-swung 
mirrors. Occasionally was seen there Mrs. Fielding Lewis, 
Washington's " Sister Betty," a lady so like her illustrious 
brother, that it was a family jest to throw around her a mili- 



12 



A New Nation 



tary cloak, put a cocked hat on her head, and file by salut- 
ing her as " general." 



During these years of quiet many minor schemes engaged 
Washington's attention. Through Lafayette he promised 
her Imperial Majesty to secure a vocabulary of certain Indian 
tribes on the frontier, but besought the great lady to have 
patience with the time consumed in getting it. On Febru- 
ary 8, 1787, he enclosed to R. H, Lee the plan of the 
Countess of Huntington to evangelize the Indians of the 

Western territory, a vo- 
luminous manuscript, sent 
through Sir James Jay, 
which Washington apolo- 
gizes for not copying, on 
the ground that he is much 
pressed in correspondence. 
It is to be feared that the 
good countess got little 
comfort from her Indians, 
whatever she may have de- 
rived from the courtesy of Lee and Washington. 

Although his reading was chiefly military or agricultural, 
Washington dipped now and then into belles-lettres. The 
same faithful Dickey Lee to whom once in childish round- 
hand he had written, " I am going to get a new whip-top 
and you may see and whip it too," has left a letter wherein 
Washington acknowledges a certain " packet," regretting 
that his " want of knowledge of the language " prevents 
him from forming an opinion of his own about the '' dra- 
matic performances " of " Monsieur Serviteur le Bar- 
bier." 




Harpsichord and flute in the Wash- 
ington home at Mount Vernon. 



Washington at Mount Vernon 



13 



The general's charities were of the least conspicuous, yet 
most judicious character. Careful in minute expenditure, 
he was never known to turn a deaf ear to the country poor — 
and their number was not small — who begged of him an 
audience. For their use he kept a granary on the estate 
filled with corn, and a boat with seine moored- in one of his 
best herring-fisheries. Governor Johnson cites an example 
of his secret bounty to a number of miserably poor moun- 
taineers in the neighborhood of one of the " Virginia 
Springs," to whom the 
baker of the place was 
ordered to supply a daily 
dole of bread, without 
revealing the giver's 
name, which was found 
out, quite by chance, to 
be that of Washington. 
His foundation of the 
school for boys in Alex- 
andria, mentioned in this will, was a work heartily appreci- 
ated then, and even now, by his townspeople. 

No sketch of Washington's home life should omit men- 
tion of his servants. Chief among these, dean of the corps 
in point of dignity and right of precedence, was Bishop, the 
English soldier who had been Braddock's body-servant at 
the fatal Monongahela, and was by him dying, commended 
to the care of Washington. Bishop literally grew gray in 
the service of Mount Vernon, marrying there, and living in 
a house on the estate till his death at the age of eighty-odd 
years. As he got on in life the ex-militaire became some- 
thing whimsical ; more than once Washington fell upon the 
too transparent device of bidding him seek elsewhere for 




Washington's Inkstand, Candlestick, 
Snuffers, etc. 



H 



A New Nation 



a master if not satisfied with him. But the old fox held 
his own; and to his retreat choice bits continued to be sent 
from the house-table, while all visitors made a point of 
paying their respects to him. 

Billy, or Will, Lee, the mulatto ex-huntsman of the Fair- 
fax County chase, pompous and alert, stood behind his 
master's chair at meals. Off duty, it was his pride, espe- 
cially with military visitors, to assume an easy air of in- 
timacy with the executive 
proceedings of the Revo- 
lutionary War. 

Daddy Jack, the fisher- 
man, was a characteristic 
feature of a Virginian 
plantation. He was an 
aged negro, as gray of tint 
and as dry in texture as 
the lichen on a dead tree. 
His claim to be " Mos' a 
hund'ed, chile," was ac- 
cepted without question. 
Jack told many weird 
stories of his debut in life as the son of an African king, 
with chapters of fire and bloodshed in which his father's 
fall before the sword and his own capture and forced voy- 
age to America were touched with lurid tints. 

Old Tom Davis, weather-beaten and hearty, carrying his 
gun and pouch, his body wrapped with strings of game, his 
dogs at heel, was long a familiar spectacle of the woods on 
the estate. 

" Black Gary," a negro, freed by the terms of Washing- 
ton's will, lived to the reputed age of a hundred and fourteen 




Washington's Lamp, now in the Na- 
tional Museum. 



Washington at Mount Vernon 15 



years in 
Washington 




Washington's Tomb. 



the city of 
This old 
fellow's stock in trade 
was, naturally, his past 
connection with the 
family at Mount Ver- 
non. He levied trib- 
ute on the strength of 
it, exacting from his 
own race the deference 
paid to a king in exile. 

The chief's admirable care of his servants is fully shown 
by his will and other writings. No master could have been 
more provident for their future, more considerate of their 
daily wants. 

To stop and parley with his favorite henchman formed 
one of the pleasures of his daily ride. The sovereign of a 
system genuinely feudal was the master of one of those great 
eighteenth-century plantations in Virginia. Happy he who, 
ike Washington, could induce the intolerable curse of slavery 
to wear the semblance of a blessing. 

Thus, surrounded by friends who loved them and depend- 
ents whose lives they 
continually brightened, 
it made little difference 
to sober people in the 
afternoon of life, like 
the general and his 
wife, that society about 
their home had lost 
something of pre-revo- 
View of the Potomac. lutionary sparkle. Al- 




i6 A New Nation 

ready the ebb-tide of Virginia's glory had set in, and the 
class inspired by Jefferson, whom the ladies of Mount Ver- 
non scrupled not to call " those filthy Democrats," had be- 
gun their work of image-breaking in the stronghold of colo- 
nial aristocracy. Such as it was, Washington's State was 
knit into the fibers of his heart. 

So her sons and daughters look tenderly upon Virginia 
wrapping around her poverty and sorrow the tattered rem- 
nants of a glorious past ; and in her behalf a noble voice has 
spoken to all Americans in these words : 

Virginia gave us this imperial man, 

Cast in the massive mould 

Of those high-statured ages old 

Which into grander forms our mortal metal ran ; 

She gave us this unblemished gentleman. 

What shall we give her back but love and praise, 

As in the dear old unestranged days 

Before the inevitable wrong began? 

Mother of States and undiminished men, 

Thou gavest us a country, giving him. 




Washington taking the oath as President. 




THE INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON 
By Clarence Winthrop Bowen 

The requisite number of States hav- 
ing adopted the Constitution, Congress 
reported an act for putting the new 
government into operation. 

At sunset on the evening of March 3, 
1789, the old Confederation was fired 
out by thirteen guns from the fort op- 
Fromapennyofi79i. ^^^^^^ Bowhng Green in New York, 

and on Wednesday, the 4th, the new era was ushered in by 
the firing of eleven guns in honor of the eleven States that 
had then adopted the Constitution. (Rhode Island and 
North Carolina had not.) 

The new Constitution was considered a " Sheet anchor of 
Commerce and pcop of Freedom," and it was thought that 
Congress would again thrive, the farmer meet ihimediately 
a ready market for his produce, manufacturers flourish and 
peace and prosperity adorn our land. " After a long night 
of political apprehension " was at length seen *' the dawn of 
National happiness." . . . 

After the city of New York had been selected by the old 
Congress for the meeting of the new Congress, it was at once 
determined to transform the old City Hall into the new 
Federal Hall. A number of wealthy gentlemen advanced 
the thirty-two thousand dollars needed for repairs. The 
transformation of the building was eagerly watched and its 



The Inauguration of Washington 19 

progress duly reported in the newspapers of the day. When 
thrown open to the inspection of the public a short time 
before the inauguration, it was seen to be an imposing 
structure. 

On Wednesday, the first of April, the House of Repre- 
sentatives formed a quorum and immediately proceeded to 




Old City Hall, Wall Street, 1776. 

the transaction of business, the most important of which 
was the counting of electoral votes for President and Vice- 
President of the United States. George Washington of 
Virginia was the unanimous choice for President, having 
received sixty-nine, or the total number of votes cast. The 
next highest number, or thirty-four votes, were cast for 
John Adams of Massachusetts and he was declared elected 
Vice-President of the United States. 

Only one man was thought of to carry the notice of elec- 
tion to Mount Vernon, and he was Charles Thomson. 
After Mr. Thomson had presented to the President-elect the 
certificate of election which the President of the Senate had 



20 



A New Nation 




Federal Edifice, New York. 



given him and had made a formal address, stating the pur- 
pose of his visit, Washington at once replied, accepting the 

appointment, and said : 

" I am so much affected 
by this fresh proof of my 
country's esteem and con- 
fidence that silence can 
best explain my gratitude. 
While I realize the ardu- 
ous nature of the task 
which is imposed upon me 
and feel my own inability 
to perform it, I wish that 
there may not be reason for 
regretting the choice ; for, indeed, all I can promise is only 
to accomplish that which can be done by an honest zeal. 

" Upon considering how long time some of the gentle- 
men of both Houses of Congress have been at New York, 
how anxiously desirous they must be to proceed to business, 
and how deeply the public mind appears to be impressed 
with the necessity of doing it speedily, I cannot find myself 
at liberty to delay my journey. I shall, therefore, be in readi- 
ness to set out the day after to-morrow, and shall be happy 
in the pleasure of your company ; for you will permit me to 
say that it is a peculiar gratification to have received this 
communication from you." 

And yet Washington's correspondence during the fall and 
winter preceding his inauguration shows how reluctant 
he was to accept the Presidency. To Benjamin Lincoln 
he wrote : " I most heartily wish the choice you allude 
to may not fall upon me. . . . If I should conceive 
myself in a manner constrained to accept, I call Heaven to 



The Inauguration of Washington 21 

witness that this very act would be the greatest sacrifice of 
my personal feelings and wishes that ever I have been called 
upon to make:" To Samuel Hanson he said : " The first 
wish of my soul is to spend the evening of my days as a pri- 
vate citizen on my farm." " My movements to the chair of 
government," he wrote to Henry Knox, " will be accom- 
panied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going 
to -the place of execution. . . . Integrity and firmness 
are all I can promise. These, be the voyage long or short, 
shall never forsake me." 

The long-expected day was now at hand. It was the 
30th of April, 1789, and the first President of the United 




Washington's Pew in St. Paul's Church, New York. 



22 



A New Nation 



c ^ 





■lllKlSJitL"' " ^.-{sp- ' ^ ■'- wl If !' ■■ -( 




>* 



Fraunce's Tavern, on Broad and Pearl Streets. 

States was to take the oath of fidehty to the new Constitution. 
With a discharge of artillery at sunrise from old Fort George 
near Bowling Green began the ceremonies of the day. 
Crowds were pouring into New York. " We shall remain 
here even if we have to sleep in tents, as so many will have to 
do," wrote Miss Bertha Ingersoll to Miss McKean ; " Mr. 
Williamson had promised to engage us rooms at Fraunce's^ 
but that was jammed long ago." 

At 9 the bells of the churches rang for half an hour and 
the congregations gathered in their respective places of wor- 
ship " to implore the blessings of Heaven upon their new 
government, its favor and protection to the President, and 

1 Fraunce's Tavern, built in 1710. It was Washington's head- 
quarters in 1783. Here, too, Washington bade farewell to his officers, 
December 4, 1783. The building is still standing at loi Broad street, 
corner of Pearl street. 



The Inauguration of Washington 23 

success and acceptance to his administration." The mih- 
tary were meanwhile preparing to parade, and at 12 o'clock 
marched before the President's house on Cherry street. 
, . . arrived within twp hundred yards of Federal Hall at 
I o'clock. They were drawn up on each side and Washing- 
ton and the assistants and the gentlemen especially invited 
passed through the lines and proceeded to the senate chamber 
of the Federal State House. 

Washington was dressed in a full suit of dark brown 
cloth manufactured at Hartford, with metal buttons, with 
an eagle on them, and " with a steel-hilted dress sword, 
white silk stockings, and plain silver shoe-buckles. His 
hair was dressed and powdered in the fashion of the 
day." . . . 

Secretary Otis of the Senate held before him a red vel- 
vet cushion, upon which rested the open Bible of St. John's 
Lodge. " You do solemnly swear," said Chancellor Robert 
R. Livingston, " that you will faithfully execute the office of 
President of the United States, and will to the best of your 
ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the 
United States." " I do solemnly swear," replied Washing- 
ton, " that I will faithfully execute the office of President of 
the United States, and will to the best of 
my ability, preserve, protect, and defend 
the Constitution of the United States." 
He then bowed his head and kissed the 
sacred book and with the deepest feeling 
uttered the words, "So help me, God." 
The Chancellor then proclaimed, " Long 
live George Washington, President of the 
United States." The instant discharge of Chair used by Wash- 
thirteen cannon followed. auguratfon. ^^ 




24 



A New Nation 



After delivering his address, the President, accompanied 
by the Vice-President, the Speaker, the two Houses of Con- 
gress, and all who attended the inauguration ceremony, pro- 
ceeded on foot to St. Paul's Church where services were 
conducted by the chaplain of the Senate. 




Colonial fragments.— Door trim from 55 Broadway — George Wash- 
ington's chair — clock at 57 Broadway. 



HOW WE BOUGHT LOUISIANA 

By Helen Lockwood Coffin 

It is a hard matter to tell just how much power a little 
thing has, because little things have the habit of growing. 
That was the trouble that France and England and Spain 
and all the other big nations had with America at first. The 
thirteen colonies occupied so small and unimportant a strip 
of land that few people thought they would ever amount to 
much. How could such insignificance ever bother old Eng- 
land, for instance, big and powerful as she was? To Eng- 
land's great loss she soon learned her error in underestima- 
ting the importance or strength of her colonies. 

France watched the giant and the pygmy fighting together, 
and learned several lessons while she was watching. For 
one thing, she found out that the little American colonies 
were going to grow, and so she said to herself : " I will be a 
sort of back-stop to them. These Americans are going to 
be foolish over this bit of success, and think that just because 
they have won the Revolution they can do anything they 
wish to do. They '11 think they can spread out all over this 
country and grow to be as big as England herself; and of 
course anybody can see that that is impossible. I '11 just put 
up a net along the Mississippi River, and prevent them cross- 
ing over it. That will be the only way to keep them within 
bounds." 

And so France held the Mississippi, and from there back to 
the Rocky Mountains, and whenever the United States citi- 
es 



26 



A New Nation 



zen desired to go west of 
the Mississippi, France 
said : " No, dear child. 
Stay within your own 
yard and play, like a good 
little boy," or something 
to that effect. 

Now the United States 
citizen did n't like this at 
all; he had pushed his 
way with much trouble 
and expense and hard 
work through bands of 
Indians and through for- 
ests and over rivers and 
mountains, into Wiscon- 
sin and Illinois, and he 
wished to go farther. 
Thomas Jefferson. And, besides, he wanted 

to have the right to sail up and down the Mississippi, and 
so save himself the trouble of walking over the land and 
cutting out his own roads as he went. So when France 
said, " No, dear," and told him to " be a good little boy and 
not tease," the United States citizen very naturally rebelled. 
Mr. Jefferson was President of the United States at that 
time, and he was a man who hated war of any description. 
He certainly did not wish to fight with his own countrymen, 
and he as certainly did not wish to fight with any other na- 
tion, so he searched around for some sort of a compro- 
mise. He thought that if America could own even one port 
on this useful river and had the right of Mississippi naviga- 
tion, the matter would be settled with satisfaction to all 




How We Bought Louisiana 



27 



parties. So he sent James Monroe over to Paris to join 
our minister, Mr. Livingston, and see if the two of them to- 
gether could not persuade France to sell them the island of 
New Orleans, on which was the city of the same name. 

Now Napoleon was the ruler of France, and he was 
dreaming dreams and seeing visions in which France was 
the most important power in America, because she owned 
this wonderful Mississippi River and all this " Louisiana " 
which stretched back from the river to the Rockies. He al- 




The United States after the Louisiana Purchase. 



ready held forts along the river, and he was planning to 
strengthen these and build some new ones. But you know 
what happens to the plans of mice and men sometimes. 
Napoleon was depending upon his army to help him out on 
these plans, but his armies in San Domingo were swept away 



28 A New Nation 

by war and sickness, so that on the day he had set for them 
to move up into Louisiana not a man was able to go. At the 
same time Napoleon had on hand another scheme against 
England, which was even more important than his plans for 
America, and which demanded men and money. Besides 
this, he was shrewd enough to know that he could not hold 
this far-away territory for any long time against England, 
which had so many more ships than France. He suddenly 
changed his mind about his American possessions, and nearly 
sent Mr. Monroe and Mr. Livingston into a state of collapse 
by offering to sell them not only New Orleans but also the 
whole Province of Louisiana. 

There was no time to write to President Jefferson and 
ask his advice, and this was before the days of the cable ; so 
Monroe and Livingston took the matter into their own hands, 
and signed the contract which transferred the Louisiana 
territory to the United States for a consideration of 
$15,000,000. They were severely criticized by many of 
their own countrymen, and they had some doubts of their 
own about the wisdom of their action. You see, nobody 
knew then that corn and wheat would grow so abundantly in 
this territory, or that beyond the Mississippi there were such 
stretches of glorious pasture-lands, or that underneath its 
mountainous regions were such mines of gold, silver, and 
copper. Americans saw only the commercial possibilities of 
the river, and all they wanted was the right of navigating it 
and the permission to explore the unknown country to the 
westward. 

But Jefferson and Monroe and Livingston builded better 
than they knew. All this happened a hundred years ago; 
and to-day that old Louisiana territory is, in natural re- 
sources, the wealthiest part of the whole United States. 



How We Bought Louisiana 29 

Without that territory in our possession we should have no 
Colorado and no Wyoming, no Dakotas, or Nebraska, or 
Minnesota, or Montana, or Missouri, or Iowa, or Kansas, or 
Arkansas, or Louisiana, or Oklahoma, or Indian Territory. 

If Columbus had nextv discovered America, you know, 
we could never have had a World's Fair in Chicago ; and if 
Mr. Monroe and Mr. Livingston had never purchased 
Louisiana, we could have had no Louisiana Purchase Expo- 
sition. 

For all these reasons we owe our most sincere and hearty 
thanks to the patriotic and far-sighted men who were con- 
cerned in buying this territory for the United States. 










THE LAST CONQUISTADOR ^ 
By E. S. Brooks 

There was trouble and turmoil in the Spanish fort at 
Baton Rouge. There was disquiet and unrest through all 
that section of Louisiana that was not yet free from the 
authority of Spain. 

It was the summer of the year 1810. Emigrants from 
the pushing States along the Atlantic seaboard and from the 
scarcely conquered forests of the West were seeking homes 
within that fair and fertile southern country, through which 
the mighty Mississippi cuts its winding way to the Mexican 
Gulf. And, as they came, they brought with them into all 
that soft Southland between the Mississippi and the Pearl, 
the sturdy breezes of personal liberty and civil freedom. 
With this spirit they imbued the frontier folk among whom 
they came to settle, and, as a result, they grew more and more 
aggressive toward the slender garrison that, in the tumble- 
down fort at Baton Rouge, sought to maintain some show 
of authority in that region for King Ferdinand of Spain. 

It was but a sorry show, withal. Rood by rood, that once 
magnificent empire that De Soto had conquered for his 
king — long held by France, and again, through fifty years, 
a province of Spain, — was fast slipping away from the 

1 The earlier Spanish fighters in America delighted in the title of 
el conquistador es, the conquerors. This story of the boy who made 
the last stand for Spain in the Mississippi country was suggested to 
me by Mr. George W. Cable, who had been impressed by the pluck 
and loyalty of young Louis Grandpre. 

30 



The Last Conquistador 31 

Don's unsteady hand. The shifting fortunes of war and 
of diplomacy had even before this crisis-year of 1810 re- 
duced Spain's possessions along the Mississippi to a section 
not very much larger than the little Northern State of 
Delaware. 

And even this strip of Spanish territory the American 
pioneers openly coveted. Joining to themselves the dis- 
affected ones among the French colonists, and those who, 
remembering the Don O'Reilly's iron hand, had ever hated 
Spain, the new-comers, by bluster and artifice, by much talk 
and the most persistent scoffing at Spain's shadow of author- 
ity, were drawing nearer and nearer to their prize. And 
now the only " lion in the path " seemed but a very weak 
one — a boy of sixteen, stationed in an old and crumbling 
fort at Baton Rouge. 

This was the way of it. Don Carlos de Grandpre, gov- 
ernor and commandant for Spain at Baton Rouge, was 
dead. His successor, the hit aidant Delusas, had, through 
fear or in the hope of obtaining succor, absented himself 
from his post, leaving in charge as only officer, Louis Grand- 
pre, the son of the former governor. 

But Louis Grandpre was no ordinary boy. Reared amid 
all the dangers and hardships of a frontier post, he had been 
compelled to assume and accept responsibilities early in life. 

The mingled French and Spanish blood that flowed in his 
veins bore in it some strain of the old-time heroism which 
had marked the days of paladin and Cid ; and Louis Grand- 
pre's one legacy from his father, the commandant, was this 
maxim of the camp : A soldier's first duty is obedience ; his 
watchword, " Loyalty to King, to Country, and to Flag." 

He was a child of that fair Southern land, and its forests 
and savannas, its bayous, lakes, and rivers, its flowers and 



32 A New Nation 

birds, and even its tropic tangle of morass and swamp, were 
all dear to his heart. Above them the flag of his king had 
waved for half a centnry, and to defend them from the 
enemies of his king was his duty as a soldier and a son of 
Spain. 

Knowing this of him, we can understand the full meaning 
of the defiant attitude and the flushed face of the boy com- 
mandant of Baton Rouge as, on a bright July morning of 
1810, he listened to the report with which the old half-pay 
sergeant, Estevan Sera, who had served under this lad's 
father, came to headquarters. 

''My capitan!" 

"Weh, sergeant?" 

" Here has come to us sorry news from above. Pedro the 
Natchez is just in from the Bayou Sara country, and tells of 
much plotting against us. The Americans are to march 
upon Baton Rouge speedily, and have vowed to drive us 
out." 

" Well, sergeant, to threaten is easy, but to do is harder 
work. Let the Americans try us if they will. We can 
but do our duty. Who leads them on? " 

" El capitan Thomas heads the riflemen, and with the 
dragoons comes that son of Satan, Depassau, to whom your 
father once gave life. One hundred men and forty is the 
force they bring — and what can we hope to do? " 

" What, sergeant, but hold the fort for Spain and for the 
King! For that we are here. To that our lives are 
pledged ; and, unless other orders come to me from Pensa- 
cola, that will I strive to do. A soldier of Spain can but 
do his duty — and die." 

With many a " caramha!" of protest and many a half- 
grumble at this simple but unpleasant doctrine of his young 



The Last Conquistador 33 

commandant, the old sergeant shuffled away; and yet, even 
though he could not accept the alternative, he could not but 
rejoice over the pluck and courage of this boy whom he had 
watched and tutored almost from the cradle. 

Misfortune is fleet of foot. Even before young Grandpre 
had time to strengthen his works and decently equip his com- 
mand, the enemy was on the march. Depassau with forty 
dragoons was approaching by the St. Francisville road, and 
Thomas, with more than eighty riflemen, had bivouacked in 
the pinewoods to the south. 

Matters looked black indeed for the young commandant 
of the Spanish fort. 

Louis Grandpre knew — none better — the character of 
the foemen whom he must face in fight. The dragoons, as 
the sergeant had called them, were bold horsemen — " cow- 
boys " of that early day. Full of the tireless spirit, the 
daring, and the recklessness that a free rein on the broad 
savannas of the Southwest gives to every ranger of the 
prairie and the plains, their charges were irresistible, their 
saber-swings were death. The riflemen were Northern 
foresters — desperate fighters, quick of eye, unerring of aim, 
sharp-shooters, and sure shooters all. Horse and foot alike 
were, as he knew, distinguished for a hardihood, a dash, and 
an alertness in action that not one of the lazy veterans in 
his crippled fort was capable of resisting. 

For this was his condition : To this whirlwind of 
" Yankee " invasion he could oppose only a garrison of less 
than fifty worn-out Spanish soldiers in a decaying and half 
dismantled fort, upon which scarcely a touch of repair had 
been made since the days — a half-dozen years before — 
when his father, Don Carlos, had successfully withstood 
just such an invasion of Yankee malcontents — though with 



34 



A New Nation 



a much more serviceable garrison and against a much less 
thoroughly organized foe. 

Riding into the plaza, or " grand square," of the little 
town of Baton Rouge, Louis stood beneath the ample folds 
of the big Spanish banner. 




"He bade his men stand fast for the King." 



" Long live King Ferdinand ! " he cried ; and then he sum- 
moned all true subjects of Spain to rally to the support of 
the king's garrison. 

" Until other orders shall come to me," he said, " I am 
here to defend the charge that has been given into my hands 
— the fort of Baton Rouge, your town, and the king's au- 
thority in this his province. He who sides with the in- 
vaders is a traitor to the king, and Spain knows no mercy to 



The Last Conquistador 35 

traitors. Let all true sons and subjects of Spain follow me 
into the fort ! " 

There was in the ringing voice and determined words of 
this manly boy an enthusiasm that had its effect upon certain 
of the townspeople. But when, with the banner still float- 
ing over his head and with fife and drum playing a martial 
air, the young commandant rode back through the gate of the 
fort, less than forty of the " loyal subjects of Spain " fol- 
lowed him from the town. 

Arming them hastily, he placed them in the rear rank, be- 
hind the regular garrison, and then, marshaling his little 
army on the parade, just within the gates, he bade his men, 
in a few earnest words, stand fast for the king. 

It was a most unpromising-looking army. It numbered 
less than a hundred men all told. 

Could he depend upon them? He felt assured that not 
much confidence was to be placed in his new recruits from 
the town ; and as for the soldiers of his garrison — well, even 
there he was uncertain. Most of them were old and in- 
valided soldiers who had long been strangers to a battle, and 
very many of them were little better than cripples — sorry- 
looking fellows all when it came to standing before a cavalry 
charge or facing riflemen's fire. 

But upon them alone he must depend. He could look 
nowhere for succor, from no quarter could he expect it. 

Far to the eastward lay Pensacola and the little Spanish 
province of Florida — scarcely better provided for defense 
or resistance than was his threatened post of Baton Rouge. 

All about him, crowding into the very smallest show 
of authority and space the contracted limits of the province 
he was set to guard, stretched the lands that the Americans 
had bought from France — lands forever lost to Spain. 



36 A New Nation 

Within the " Territory of Orleans " to the south — Amer- 
ican in ownership, Creole and French in population — 
there were to be found few indeed ready to lift a hand in 
his behalf, to strengthen the arm or train the guns of 
Spain. 

To the east the Mississippi territory was fast filling up 
with Northern folk, English by birth and blood, Americans 
all in future and in desire. The failure of Colonel Aaron 
Burr had shown how hard it was to win these new settlers 
in the South from their allegiance to the spreading and 
successful American Republic. 

Louis Grandpre knew well enough that the end was not 
far off. He knew, too, that the days of Spain's sover- 
eignty in the Mississippi Valley were doomed, and that, 
when the flag of his king came down from the tall staff 
upon the time-stained blockhouse in the fort, the last vestige 
of Spain's authority would be swept away. 

The post of Baton Rouge was Spain's forlorn hope, left 
despairingly upon the bayous of Louisiana. And he, as its 
commander, must stand or fall with it. Los Americanos 
should see what it meant to face in fight the gentlemen of 
Spain ! 

Alas! it is always so easy to promise; but performance, 
as we shall see, is quite another matter. 

" The gentlemen of Spain " had not long to wait. There 
was a clatter of hoofs through the deserted town, a ringing 
Yankee cheer, and the shrill call of the bugle demanding a 
parley at the gate. 

Somewhat stiff of joint, old Sergeant Sera started to 
answer the summons; but even as the rickety gate swung 
open, the reckless and unconventional Depassau, contrary 
to all the rules of war, dashed through the gate at the head 



The Last Conquistador 



37 



of his forty horsemen, overthrowing in the rush the slow- 
going old sergeant. Dazed and dumbfounded at his sud- 
den overthrow and at this breach of military etiquette, old 




" Doffing his hat, he bent low in mock courtesy to the boy." 



Sera picked himself up, bruised and grumbling, and then 
burst into a torrent of hot Spanish exclamations more per- 
tinent than polite. 

The ranks of the Spanish garrison recoiled perceptibly 



38 A New Nation 

before this unexpected onset. But Louis Grandpre, sword 
in hand, faced the intruders. 

" Sirs ! " he demanded, " what means this armed and 
hostile entrance into a fortress of the King of Spain? " 

" What, young Grandpre! — are you the captain here? " 
Depassau said, with a laugh, as he reined in his horse. 
" Well, we want the fort; that's what it means. Or — if 
you must have it in better form : In the name of the peo- 
ple of the sovereign State of West Florida I demand the 
instant surrender of the fortress of Baton Rouge ! " 

" Captain Depassau," the young commandant replied, 
" this post of Baton Rouge, belonging to His Majesty King 
Ferdinand of Spain, has been left in my charge, as intend- 
ant, by my superior, the governor of Baton Rouge. He 
has left with me no orders to hand over the fort to others. 
Much less has he permitted me to surrender it to a parcel 
of rebels, as are these you lead. Until other commands 
come to me from the governor I am here to defend this 
post, and that I will do with my life. Unless you retire at 
once, I shall order my soldiers to fire upon you ! " 

" Well crowed, young game-cock ! " cried Depassau, 
while a chorus of laughter from his band echoed his words. 
" Why, what a young fire-eater it is ! Most noble Sefior 
Intaidcntc," — and, doffing his hat, he bent low in mock 
courtesy to the boy, who, with drawn sword, stood so de- 
fiantly in his path, — " we regret to inconvenience so valiant 
a caballero, but we have taken a fancy to this post of Baton 
Rouge, and we mean to have it — town, fort, commandant, 
and all ! " and, swooping down upon the lad, he would have 
seized him as a prisoner. But Louis Grandpre was as ac- 
tive as he was valiant. Deftly dodging the attempt at 
capture — " Ha, Depassau ! " he shouted, " traitor and 



The Last Conquistador 39 

double traitor, would you seek to turn a parley into an at- 
tack ? Holo, my men ! Ready ! Fire ! Drive these traitors 
out!" 

And, with ringing voice and waving sword, he turned 
toward the ranks of his garrison to inspire them to instant 
action. Not a man was there ! 

Those Spanish soldiers had a healthily developed fear of 
los Americanos. The long rifles and the ready sabers of 
those Yankees, their unerring aim and their resistless dash, 
were not pleasant enemies to face in the open field. They 
believed their only safety lay behind stout walls. 

So it was that, quietly, but hastily and unanimously, the 
garrison of Baton Rouge had deemed discretion the better 
part of valor, and, without awaiting the formality of the 
word of command, had withdrawn into the blockhouse that 
formed the inner defense of every frontier fort of the last 
century. 

Depassau's horsemen laughed in loud derision. But on 
Louis Grandpre's face anger and sorrow alike raised the 
flush of shame. 

" Cowards ! " he cried, turning to the blockhouse, " would 
you run from a parcel of Yankee rebels? Holo there! 
Come out ! To your captain, my men ! For Spain ! For 
Spain ! " 

" Come, come, Louis, my lad," Depassau said patron- 
izingly, " I don't want to hurt you. I want only this fort, 
and have it I will. Your men are afraid to fight. What 
is the use of holding out longer? Pull down your Spanish 
flag from the blockhouse yonder ; march out your men, and 
we will put you on your way to Pensacola, without a 
scratch. Come; give up your sword." 

" Never ! " answered the boy, haughtily. " My sword is 



40 



A New Nation 



my king's. I would rather die than break my promise. It 
is my duty to hold this post for my master, King Ferdi- 
nand, and hold it I will — or die ! " 

" We have wasted too much time on you already," De- 
passau angrily broke out. " For the blockhouse, boys ! 
Charge!" 

And at his word the horsemen dashed up to the tumble- 
down palisade that protected the door to the blockhouse, 
set in an angle of the fort. 

But, quick as was their action, Louis Grandpre was be- 
fore them. With a spring he cleared the space that lay be- 
fore the palisade, closed and barred the rickety gate, and 
the next instant was within the blockhouse rallying his 
men. 

But they refused to be rallied. 

" Of what use is it to make a stand against them, my 

captain? " old Ser- 
/ geant Sera asked. 

I " It is only to meet 

death. Their rifles 
and their sabers are 
too strong for us 
to face." 

" What ! would 
you have me too 
turn traitor, and 
basely give up 
what I am charged 
to defend?" the 
boy indignantly de- 
manded. " Is it 
thus, O Sergeant, 




^■^ 



Louis Grandpre rushed from the block- 
house — alone." 



The Last Conquistador 41 

' that my father would have done — or Galvez, the young 
hero who won this very fort of Baton Rouge from the Eng- 
lish ? No ; they would have fought to the death ! Holo, 
my men! twenty of you to the port-holes with your guns. 
Fire when I bid you. Do you, Sera, look to the defenses. 
The rest — you who love Spain and honor your king — 
follow me and drive the rebels out ! " 

And, sword in hand, young Grandpre rushed from the 
blockhouse to meet the foe — alone ! 

At that very instant, with a loud war-whoop, in through 
the southern gate of the fort dashed Thomas and his eighty 
border rifles. Beneath the blows of the dismounted dra- 
goons the crazy gate of the palisade went down with a 
crash, and with a mighty cheer the Americans swarmed into 
the inclosure. 

" Back, on your lives ! Ho, in the blockhouse there ! 
Fire on these rebels ! " 

With his back firmly set against the blockhouse wall, 
his lifted sword flashing in the sunlight, before them all 
he stood defiant — one against a hundred ! 

There came a clatter of horsemen charging up to the 
door of the blockhouse ; there rang out a volley from the 
Northern rifles as the besiegers rushed in — and that was 
all ! At the door that shielded his craven garrison, — 
within the fort which, because he had no instruction to 
surrender it, he deemed it his duty to defend to the last, — 
Louis Grandpre fell. 

" Long live King Ferdinand ! " he cried. " Santiago 
and Spain ! " 

And so he died — a martyr to duty. 

Then, surrounded by the resistless invaders, the thor- 
'oughly frightened garrison cried aloud for quarter, the 



42 



A New Nation 



Spanish flag came fluttering down, and the last hold of 
Spain upon the valley of the Mississippi was broken. 

Not alone to the soldier of freedom does death in the 
hour of victory or defeat bring glory everlasting. Even 
to him, who, in the face of certain disaster, upholds the 
honor of his flag, is praise abounding due. 

Louis Grandpre died a hero. And American boys who 
honor the brave can assuredly pause in their pride in all 
that is American to bestow a word of appreciation upon 
the gallant lad who was faithful to his trust, and man- 
fully struck the last blow for Spain in the land where Spain 
had won and lost an empire. 




Desk on which the Declaration of Independence was written. 
From a drawing by Thomas Jefferson. 



CAUSES OF THE WAR (1812) 
By President James Madison 

France has done nothing towards adjusting our dif- 
ferences with her. It is understood that the BerHn and 
Milan Decrees are not in force against the United States, 
and no contravention of them can be estabHshed against 
her. On the contrary, positive cases rebut the allegation. 
Still, the manner of the French Government betrays the 
design of leaving G. Britain a pretext for enforcing her 
Orders in Council. And in all other respects, the grounds 
for our complaints remain the same. ... In the mean 
time, the business is become more than ever puzzling. To 
go to war with England and not with France arms the 
Federalists with new matter, and divides the Republicans, 
some of whom, with the Quids, make a display of impar- 
tiality. To go to war against both presents a thousand 
difficulties; above all, that of shutting all the ports of the 
Continent of Europe against our cruisers, who can do little 
without the use of them. It is pretty certain, also, that it 
would not gain over the Federalists, who would turn all 
those difficulties against the administration. The only 
consideration of weight in favor of this triangular war, as 
it is called, is, that it might hasten through a peace with 
G. Britain or France ; a termination, for a while, at 
least, of the obstinate questions now depending with both. 

But even this advantage is not certain. For a prolon- 
gation of such a war might be viewed by both belligerents 

43 



44 A New Nation 

as desirable, with as little reason for the opinion as has 
prevailed in the past conduct of both. 

[June 22.] I inclose a paper containing the Declaration 
of war. . . . It is understood that the Federalists 
in Congress are to put all the strength of their talents into 
a protest against the war, and that the party at large are to 
be brought out in all their force. ... 

[July 25.] The conduct of the nation against whom 
this resort has been proclaimed left no choice but between 
that and the greater evil of a surrender of our Sovereignty 
on the Element on which all nations have equal rights, and 
in the free use of which the United States, as a nation 
whose agriculture and commerce are so closely allied, have 
an essential interest. 

The appeal to force in opposition to the force so long 
continued against us had become the more urgent, as every 
endeavor short of it had not only been fruitless, but had 
been followed by fresh usurpations and oppressions. The 
intolerable outrages committed against the crews of our ves- 
sels, which, at one time, were the result of alleged searches 
for deserters from British ships of war, had grown into a 
like pretension, first, as to all British seamen, and next, as 
to all British subjects; with the invariable practice of seiz- 
ing on all neutral seamen of every Nation, and on all such 
of our own seamen as British officers interested in the abuse 
might please to demand. 

The Blockading orders in Council, commencing on the 
plea of retaliating injuries indirectly done to G. Britain, 
through the direct operation of French Decrees against 
the trade of the United States with her, and on a professed 
disposition to proceed step by step with France in revoking 
them, have been since bottomed on pretensions more and 



Causes of the War 



45 




more extended and arbitrary, till 
at length it is openly avowed as 
indispensable to a repeal of the 
Orders as they affect the U. 
States, that the French Decrees 
be repealed as they affect G. 
Britain directly, and all other 
neutrals, as well as the United 
States. To this extraordinary 
avowal is superadded abundant 
evidence that the real object of 
the Orders is, not to restore free- 
dom to the American Commerce 
with G. Britain, which could, in- J^^^es Madison. 

deed, be little interrupted by the Decrees of France, but to 
destroy our lawful commerce, as interfering with her own 
unlawful commerce with her enemies. The only founda- 
tion of this attempt to banish the American flag from the 
highway of Nations, or to render it wholly subservient to 
the commercial views of the British Government, is the ab- 
surd and exploded doctrine that the ocean, not less than 
the land, is susceptible of occupancy and dominion; that 
this dominion is in the hands of G. Britain; and that 
her laws, not the law of Nations, which is ours as well as 
hers, are to regulate our maritime intercourse with the rest 
of the world. 

When the United States assumed and established their 
rank among the nations of the Earth, they assumed and 
established a common Sovereignty on the high seas, as well 
as an exclusive sovereignty within their territorial limits. 
The one is as essential as the other to their character as an 
Independent Nation. However conceding they may have 



46 A New Nation 

Deen on controvertible points, or forbearing under casual 
and limited injuries, they can never submit to wrongs ir- 
reparable in their kind, enormous in their amount, and in- 
definite in their duration ; and which are avowed and justi- 
fied on principles degrading the United States from the 
rank of a sovereign and independent power. In attaining 
this high rank, and the inestimable blessings attached to it, 
no part of the American people had a more meritorious 
share than the people of New Jersey. From none, there- 
fore, may more reasonably be expected a patriotic zeal in 
maintaining by the sword the unquestionable and unalien- 
able rights acquired by it . 




Sugar-bowl belonging to a dinner-set presented to Martha Washington 
by General Lafayette. 



LAURELS OF THE AMERICAN TAR IN 1812 
By Edgar S. Maclay 

It was during the War of 181 2 that the advantage of 
building our cruisers so that " separately [they] would be 
superior to any single European frigate of the usual dimen- 
sions " was demonstrated. In the three years of that war 
the British navy met with disasters which were unique in 
its annals. Before the close of the war the British Admi- 
ralty were compelled to build in imitation of the American 
cruisers. On the 17th of March, 18 14, the following no- 
tice appeared in the London Times: " Sir G. Collier was 
to sail yesterday from Portsmouth for the American sta- 
tion in the Leander, 54. This ship has been built and fitted 
out exactly upon the plan of the large American frigates." 

The second idea embodied in the Secretary's report of 
1794, in regard to building American cruisers, was "that 
if sailed by numbers they would be always able to lead 
ahead." At the very threshold of the War of 1812 the 
Constitution owt&litr escape from Captain Broke's squad- 
ron, in a large degree, to this very forethought in her con- 
struction. For three nights and two days, beginning on 
July 17, off New York, she was in imminent danger of 
capture, part of which time she was almost within gunshot 
of their leading ships. To this same provision in her con- 
struction the President owed her remarkable career and 
numerous escapes from British squadrons and ships of the 
Hne while she was scouring all corners of the navigable 

47 



48 A New Nation 

globe in her daring essays against the enemy's commerce. 
Such was her success in this particular that the origin of the 
common sea phrase " By the jumping John Rodgers " is 
attributable to her exploits, Commodore John Rodgers be- 
ing her commander during the greater part of this war. 

Again, in April, 181 5, while in the Southern Atlantic 
the sloop-of-war Hornet was chased three days and three 
nights by the British ship of the line Cornzvallis, Admiral 
Sir George Burleton. So close was the pursuit that at 
times " shot and shell were whistling about our ears and 
not a person on board had the most distant idea that there 
was a possible escape. We all packed our things and 
waited until the enemy's shot would compel us to heave to 
and surrender. Captain Biddle mustered the crew and 
told them he was pleased with their conduct during the 
chase, and looked still to perceive that propriety of conduct 
which had already marked their character and that of the 
American tar generally; that we might soon expect to be 
captured, etc. Not a dry eye was to be seen at the mention 
of the capture of the poor little Hornet." But notwith- 
standing the closeness of the chase the Hornet finally ef- 
fected her escape through her sailing qualities. 

In no instance up to the close of the War of 181 2 was an 
American cruiser overtaken by a vessel of her own class 
when she was desirous of making her escape. The case of 
the President when pursued by Captain Hayes's squadron 
on the 15th of January, 181 5, cannot be noted as an excep- 
tion, for the reason that while endeavoring to get out of 
New York harbor, the night before the chase, she grounded 
on the bar, where for two hours she thumped violently and 
became so " hogged " or " broken-backed " as to impair 
seriously her seaworthiness. A portion of her false keel 



Laurels of the American Tar 



49 



was displaced, several rudder braces broken, and the frigate 
otherwise so injured as to render a return to port imper- 
ative. This, however, owing to the strength and direction 
of the wind, was impossible, so she was forced over the 
bar and put to sea in a crippled condition. After dis- 
mantling the Endyuiion — during which action Commodore 
Decatur was wounded by a splinter — the President was 
attacked by the Tenedos and Pomona before her rigging 
could be repaired, and was forced to surrender. 

The American system of officering, manning, and carry- 
ing on discipline was superior to that of the English. Im- 




The Wounding of Decatur. 



pressment was rarely, if ever, resorted to; the men enlisted 
of their own free will, and tempted by generous wages the 
finest seamen flocked to our service. Many of the petty 
officers had been mates and even masters in merchantmen 



50 A New Nation 

before the War of 1812, and contributed* not a little by their 
skill and experience to the results of that conflict. While 
English press-gangs were descending on quiet towns, and 
hurrying men into service without giving them time to 
arrange their affairs for the change, American frigates were 
having their complements filled with picked seamen by 
merely announcing vacancies. The superiority of most 
American crews during this war was so obvious as to need 
little discussion. William James concedes the point, and 
while speaking of the 44-gun frigate United States further 
adds: 

The crew of the United States were the finest set of men ever 
seen collected on shipboard. Had Captain Decatur and his five 
lieutenants been below in the hold, there were officers enough 
among the ship's company to have brought the action to the same 
successful issue.^ 

But it was in the matter of officering the ship that the 
American system had the greatest advantage. Favoritism 
and family influence, which elevated men to high rank over 
the heads of older and more deserving officers, cost the 
British navy many bitter humiliations during the War of 
1812. The battle of Lake Champlain affords a good illus- 
tration of the manner in which British commanders were 
outmanoeuvered and outwitted. The forces engaged on 
this occasion were nearly equal, that of the Americans be- 
ing 86 guns of 1,904 pounds of metal and 850 men, while 
the English force was 92 guns of 1,900 pounds of metal 
and 1,000 men. After the battle had lasted two hours 
without either side being able to turn the tide, Captain Mac- 
donough in the Saratoga foiuid himself in a most critical 
condition. The Linnet had secured a very advantageous 

1 James's " History of the British Navy," Vol. V., p. 401. 



Laurels of the American Tar 51 

position off the Eagle's starboard quarter where the latter 
could bring but few guns to bear. Finding his springs shot 
away, Captain Henly of the Eagle sheeted home his top- 
sails, stood about, ran down the western side of the Amer- 
ican line, and anchored between the Saratoga and Ticonder- 
oga. This brought the Eagle's fresh (port) broadside in 
full play on the ConHance, Captain Downie's flagship, but 
it also enabled the Linnet to turn the American line. Cap- 
tain Pring of the Linnet immediately availed himself of 
this advantage and soon was athwart the Saratoga's fore- 
foot, raking her from stem to stern with great effect. 

As gun after gun was disabled the firing between the 
flagships gradually diminished until only a few cannon were 
in use. Aboard the Saratoga nearly all the carronades had 
been rendered useless by overcharging. Now that the 
Linnet was raking her with impunity, the situation of the 
American flagship was desperate in the extreme. To add 
to her accumulating disasters the bolt of the last carronade 
on the engaged side broke; the gun, flying off its carriage, 
tumbled down the main hatch. This left her with nearly 
every gun in her starboard battery dismounted, while the 
Confiance and Linnet were still keeping up an effective fire. 

It was in this extremity, when by all human calculations 
the day was lost, that the forethought of the American 
commander came into play. When arranging his line of 
battle he took the precaution to anchor his vessels far 
enough apart so that should the starboard battery of any 
ship become disabled her commander, by tripping his bow 
anchor and then dropping a stern anchor, could swing his 
vessel around in the northerly breeze and bring a fresh 
broadside to bear on the enemy without breaking the line 
of battle or overlapping the ship astern. 



52 



A New Nation 



The time had now come when the Saratoga must either 
surrender or bring more guns to bear. Accordingly Cap- 
tain Macdonough manned his capstan and tripped the 
bower anchor, at the same time letting go his stream anchor 
over the stern. But unfortunately the wind had abated so 
that the ship remained motionless. A line, which had been 




Preble," " Ticonderoga, 
" Chubb," 



" Eagle," " Saratoga, 
" British Galleys," 



" Linnet," " Confiance,' 
" Finch." 



BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN. 

The Saratoga and Eagle are represented in their second position ; the 
Chubb has been captured and is being carried within the American 
line, and the Confiance is being raked by the Saratoga. 



made fast to the stream anchor, was then carried forward 
and hauled on. This slowly brought the vessel around, 
but during all of this time the Linnet was pouring in broad- 
side after broadside, and now as the Saratoga exposed her 
stern the Confiance raked her with great effect. After sev- 
eral minutes of this fearful exposure Captain Macdonough 
succeeded in bringing his port battery into full play. The 



Laurels of the American Tar 53 

Americans then rushed to their guns and worked with 
vigor. Being subjected to the fire of this fresh broadside, 
the Coniiance soon had the few remaining guns of her port 
battery disabled. Seeing the success of the Saratoga's 
manceuver, the British commander attempted it also. He 
hove in his bow cables until he tripped anchor. But fur- 
ther than this his ship would not move for want of wind, 
and lacking the quick expedients of the American officers, 
he saw his ship become a wreck without being able to strike 
a blow in return, so after a conflict of two hours and a half 
he surrendered. 

Another conspicuous illustration of the readiness of an 
American officer was afforded in the fourth cruise of the 
Constitution. Captain Charles Stewart, born of poor par- 
ents in the city of Philadelphia in 1778, entered upon the 
profession of the sea in his thirteenth year as cabin boy in 
a merchantman, and rose step by step through personal 
merit to the command of the favorite frigate of the Amer- 
ican navy. 

After his extraordinary action with the corvette Cymve 
and sloop Levant sixty leagues from Madeira in February, 
18 1 5 (both after a gallant resistance being captured). Cap- 
tain Stewart dropped anchor with his prizes in Port Praya, 
in the island of St. Jago, on the loth of March. It was 
his intention to employ the merchant ship captured on the 
1 8th of the preceding month as a cartel in which to send 
all prisoners to England, preparatory to which they were 
collected in groups on the Constitution's main deck. While 
the Americans were busily engaged the officer of the deck, 
Lieutenant Shubrick, was attracted by an exclamation from 
one of the British midshipmen. Noticing that an English 
lieutenant reprimanded him in an undertone. Lieutenant 



54 A New Nation 

Shubrick became suspicious of foul play or some conspir- 
acy, and was about to communicate his fears to Captain 
Stewart, when a quartermaster called his attention to the 
sails of a large vessel just discernible through the fog in 
the ojffing. The sea at the entrance of the harbor was cov- 
ered with a heavy mist, but in the lighter haze above the 
sails of a large ship making its way to port were visible. 

This apparition, evidently the cause of the midshipman's 
exclamation, was brought to the attention of Captain Stew- 
art. As the fog shifted a little the sails of two more ves- 
sels, apparently heavy men-of-war, were discovered by the 
sharp-eyed quartermaster standing into the roads. After 
the experience of the Essex at Valparaiso, Captain Stewart 
well knew that English commanders could not be trusted to 
respect the rights of neutral ports that were not sufficiently 
fortified to enforce them. The defenses of Port Pray a were 
impotent against a first-rate frigate, and should the sails 
descried in the offing prove to be those of English men-of- 
war, as five chances to one they were, the position of the 
Constitution and her prizes was critical in the extreme. 

Captain Stewart instantly sent his crew to quarters, pris- 
oners were hurried below, the cables cut, topsails set, and 
in seven minutes from the time of the first alarm the frigate 
was under way. Signals were made to the Cyane and 
Levant to follow. Lieutenants Hoffman and Ballard pre- 
cipitately obeyed, and in an incredibly short time the three 
ships were speeding pell-mell down the harbor. A number 
of prisoners who had been landed were left behind, and 
observing the strange sails in the offing and surmising them 
to be English, they rushed to a battery and began firing so 
as to warn the approaching strangers of the presence of en- 
emies. 



Laurels of the American Tar 



55 




The Constitution in action with the Levant and Cyane. 

The wind was fresh from the northeast, while the 
strangers were approaching the harbor from the south. 
Captain Stewart therefore hugged the north shore, hoping 
to get to sea to the windward of them. Just as the Amer- 
ican vessels were clearing East Point the strangers came 
within long range. At this instant they discovered the 
Americans and crowded on all sail to intercept them. It 
now became a question of sailing. The Constitution 
crossed her topgallant yards, set foresail, mainsail, spanker, 
flying-jib, and her topgallant sails, while the two boats tow- 
ing astern w^re cut adrift. The Cyane and Levant fol- 
lowed in quick succession, while the enemy luffed up, 
close-hauled their tacks, and settled down for a long and 
determined chase. 

The strangers proved to be the English 50-gun frigate 
Leander, Sir George Collier, which we noticed as having 
" been built and fitted out exactly upon the plan of the large 



56 A New Nation 

American frigates " ; the 50-ton frigate Nczvcastlc, Captain 
Lord George Stuart; and the 40-gun frigate Acasta, Cap- 
tain Kerr. This powerful squadron had followed the Con- 
stitution across the Atlantic into this obscure quarter and 
now had her under their guns. 

Although the American vessels had gained an offing it 
was still so foggy that the hulls of the enemy were con- 
cealed, so that Captain Stewart was unable to make out 
their force or nationality. All the ships, however, had 
every stitch of canvas set from royal studding-sails down, 
and were rushing through the water at ten knots. The 
Acasta, by laying her head close to the wind, succeeded in 
weathering the Cyane and Levant, but the splendid sailing 
qualities of the Constitution enabled Captain Stewart to 
hold his own. Observing that he was drawing away from 
his prizes and that the enemy must soon close on them, he, 
at ten minutes past one o'clock, signaled the Cyane, the 
sternmost vessel, to tack to the northwest, hoping thereby 
to divide the enemy's force. Lieutenant Hoffman tacked 
as ordered, but, to the surprise of all, none of the pursuing 
ships were detailed after her. Taking advantage of this 
blunder, the Cyane continued on this course, until she had 
run the enemy out of sight, when she made for America, 
arriving in New York on the loth of April. 

By 2.30 p. M. the Nezvcastle had gained a position off the 
Constitution's lee quarter and commenced firing by divi- 
sions. The shot splashed the water within a hundred yards 
of the ship, but did not reach her. At 3 p. m. the Levant 
was in the same danger from which the Cyaiie had so 
strangely been allowed to escape. Captain Stewart now 
signaled the Levant to head northwest also, hoping that 
this would draw off one of his pursuers at least. But^ to 



Laurels of the American Tar 57 

the astonishment of every man in the American frigate, all 
the pursuing ships tacked after the Levant, whereupon 
Lieutenant Ballard changed his course to due west so as to 
regain the port, where he succeeded in anchoring under the 
guns of the fort. 

The conduct of Sir George Collier in allowing the Con- 
stitution and her prizes to escape his powerful squadron has 
given rise to many conflicting explanations on the part of 
English writers. Some claim that he did not give the order 
for all the ships to tack after the Levant, others that the 
signal was misinterpreted, while many maintain that the 
flags became entangled. 

It was in gunnery, however, that Americans attained their 
most conspicuous success. Long before the War of 181 2 
firing at targets was a regular order of routine, so that it 
has well been said that for each shot fired in earnest ten 
had been fired in practice. The London Times for October 
22, 18 1 3, while speaking of the action between the Enterprise 
and Boxer, said : 

What we regret to perceive stated, and trust will be found 
much exaggerated, is, that the Boxer was literally cut to pieces in 
sails, rigging, spars, and hull; whilst the Enterprise (her antag- 
onist) was in a situation to commence a similar action immedi- 
ately afterwards. The fact seems to be but too clearly established, 
that the Americans have some superior mode of firing ; and we 
cannot be too anxiously employed in discovering to what circum- 
stances that superiority is owing. 

Sir Edward Codrington, in writing to Lady Codrington 
in reference to the Peacock-Epervier fight, states : " It 
seems that the Peacock, American sloop-of-war, has taken 
our Epervier. But the worst part of our story is, that our 
sloop was cut to pieces and the other scarcely scratched ! " 



58 



A New Nation 



The firing of the 44-gun frigate United States, Captain 
Decatur, during her action on October 25, 181 2, with the 
38-gun frigate Macedonian^ Captain Carden, is described as 
wonderful. " The firing of the American gunners was so 
rapid that in a few minutes their ship was enveloped in a 
dense volume of smoke, which from the enemy's deck ap- 
peared like a huge thunder-cloud rolling along the water, 
illumined by lurid flashes of lightning and emitting a con- 
tinuous roar of thunder." When the Macedonian came to 
close quarters with the idea of boarding, " the American 
carronades opened and added their fire to that of the long 
guns, so that by the time she was at close quarters the broad- 
side of the United States appeared like a continuous line of 
flame, and at one time the enemy believed her to be on fire." 




The fight between the Constitution and the Giierricre. 



Laurels of the American Tar 59 

On the i8th of October, 181 2, the American sloop Wasp, 
18 guns, had a remarkable encounter in a heavy sea with the 
British sloop Frolic, 19 guns. In forty-three minutes the 
Wasp reduced her adversary to a wreck, and killed or 
wounded ninety out of a crew of no men; her own loss in 
a crew of 135 being only ten. At the end of the engagement 
the British ship Poicticrs, seventy-four guns, hove in sight, 
and running down on the Wasp captured her and her prize. 

In an action, of only twenty minutes, between the new 
sloop Wasp (namesake of the foregoing) and the Reindeer 
on June 28, 1814, in the English Channel, we are informed 
that the hull of the Reindeer was literally cut to pieces.^ 
Another English writer observes : " In a line with her ports 
the Reindeer was literally cut to pieces; her upper works, 
boats, and spare spars were one complete wreck. Her masts 
were both badly wounded ; particularly her foremast, which 
was left in a tottering state," - and on the following day, in 
spite of all efforts, it went by the board. Finding his prize 
too shattered to keep afloat. Captain Blakely blew her up. 
The Wasp received six round shot in her hull, and 24- 
pound shot through her foremast and some injury to her 
rigging. Two months after this the Wasp had a night 
action with the Avon, also a sloop-of-war of her own rate, 
the Wasp receiving only four round shot in her hull and 
some inconsiderable injury to her rigging. The fact that 
the Avon sank two hours after the Wasp was compelled by 
the approach of her consorts to leave her plainly shows that 
she was terribly shattered by the American's gunnery. 

The proficiency of American gunnery in this war is per- 
haps best illustrated by the Constitution's first action, with 

1 Allen's " Battles of the British Navy," Vol. II., p. 463. 

2 James's " History of the British Navy," Vol. VI., p. 163. 



6o A New Nation 

the Guerriere, in which she was hulled but three times, 
while her antagonist, to use the words of her commander, 
was reduced to a " perfect wreck " ^ within forty minutes 
from the time the Constitution began to fire. This battle 
occurred on August 19, 1 812. In her action with the Java, 
December 29, 181 2, off the coast of Brazil, the Constitution 
was hulled but four times, and with the exception of her 
maintopsail yard she did not lose a spar.^ The Java, on 
the other hand, was " totally dismasted," ^ while her hull was 
so shattered and pierced with shot-holes that it was impossi- 
ble to get her to the harbor of San Salvador, which was 
only a few hours' sail. In her action with the Cyane and 
Levant the forces opposed were: Constitution, 51 guns 
with 1287 pounds of metal; British, 55 guns with 1508 
pounds of metal. In this extraordinary action the Consti- 
tution was hulled only thirteen times, while the Cyane had 
every brace and bow-line cut away, " her main and mizzen 
masts left in a tottering state, and other principal spars 
wounded, several shot in the hull, nine or ten between wind 
and water." * The Levant also was roughly handled. 

Before dismissing the subject of gunnery we should take 
into consideration: i. The inferior quality of American 
cannon and shot. 2. The deficiency in weight of American 
shot. 3. The fact that in two of the four actions between 
single frigates the English used French cannon and shot, 
which were eight per cent, heavier than their nominal Eng- 
lish equivalents. 

Although American frigates in point of efifectiveness were 
superior to those of the English, yet I am persuaded that 

1 Official report of Captain Dacres. 

2 Cooper's " United States Naval History," Vol. II., p. 70. 

3 Allen's " Battles of the British Navy," Vol. II., p. 414. 

•* James's "History of the British Navy," Vol. VI., p. 249. 



Laurels of the American Tar 6i 

their victories were due not so much to the vessels as to the 
men who manceuvered and fought them. 

It will prove a matter of interest, at this late day, to ob- 
serve with what effect the news of the first three frigate 
actions with the United States was received in England. 

The news of the loss of the Java, which arrived in Lon- 
don, March 19, 181 3, seems to have drawn the following 
resigned soliloquy from the Times: 

The public will learn with sentiments which we shall not 
presume to anticipate that a third British frigate has struck to an 
American. . . . This is an occurrence that calls for serious 
reflection — this and the fact stated in our paper of yesterday, that 
Lloyd's list contains notices of upwards of five hundred British 
vessels captured, in seven months, by the Americans. Five hun- 
dred merchantmen, and three frigates? Can these statements be 
true; and can the English people bear them unmoved? Any one 
who had predicted such a result of an American war this time last 
year would have been treated as a madman or a traitor. He 
would have been told, if his opponents had condescended to argue 
with him, that long ere seven months had elapsed the American 
flag would be swept from the seas, the contemptible navy of the 
United States annihilated, and their maritime arsenals rendered 
a heap of ruins. Yet down to this moment not a single American 
frigate has struck her flag. 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS 



By Theodore Roosevelt 



When, in 1814, Napoleon was overthrown and forced to 
retire to Elba, the British troops that had followed Welling- 
ton into southern France were left 
free for use against the Americans. 
A great expedition was organized 
to attack and capture New Orleans, 
and at its head was placed General 
Pakenham, the brilliant commander 
of the column that delivered the 
fatal blow at Salamanca. In De- 
cember a fleet of British war-ships 
and transports, carrying thousands 
of victorious veterans from the Pen- 
insula, and manned by sailors who 
had grown old in a quarter of a 
century's triumphant ocean warfare, anchored off the broad 
lagoons of the Mississippi delta. The few American gun- 
boats were carried after a desperate hand-to-hand strug- 
gle, the troops were landed, and on December 23 the ad- 
vance-guard of two thousand men reached the banks of the 
Mississippi, but ten miles below New Orleans, and there 
camped for the night. 

It seemed as if nothing could save the Creole City from 
foes who had shown, in the storming of many a Spanish 

62 




Andrew Jackson. 



The Battle of New Orleans 63 

walled town, that they were as ruthless in victory as they 
were terrible in battle. There were not forts to protect the 
place, and the militia were ill armed and ill trained. But 
the hour found the man. On the afternoon of the very day 
when the British reached the banks of the river the van- 
guard of Andrew Jackson's Tennesseeans marched into New 
Orleans. Clad in hunting-shirts of buckskin or homespun, 
wearing wolfskin and coonskin caps, and carrying their long 
rifles on their shoulders, the wild soldiery of the backwoods 
tramped into the little French town. They were tall men, 
with sinewy frames and piercing eyes. Under " Old Hick- 
ory's " lead they had won the bloody battle of the Horseshoe 
Bend against the Creeks; they had driven the Spaniards 
from Pensacola ; and now they were eager to pit themselves 
against the most renowned troops of all Europe. 

Jackson acted with his usual fiery, hasty decision. It 
was absolutely necessary to get time in which to throw up 
some kind of breastworks or defenses for the city, and he 
at once resolved on a night attack against the British. As 
for the British, they had no thought of being molested. 
They did not dream of an assault from inferior numbers 
of undisciplined and ill-armed militia, who did not possess 
so much as bayonets to their guns. They kindled fires along 
the levees, ate their supper, and then, as the evening fell, 
noticed a big schooner drop down the river in ghostly silence 
and bring up opposite to them. The soldiers flocked to the 
shore, challenging the stranger, and finally fired one or two 
shots at her. Then suddenly a rough voice was heard, 
" Now give it to them, for the honor of America ! " and a 
shower of shell and grape fell on the British, driving them 
off the levee. The stranger was an American man-of-war 
schooner. The British brought up artillery to drive her 



64 A New Nation 

off, but before they succeeded Jackson's land troops burst 
upon them, and a fierce, indecisive struggle followed. In 
the night all order was speedily lost, and the two sides 
fought singly or in groups in the utmost confusion. Fi- 
nally a fog came up and the combatants separated. Jackson 
drew off four or five miles and camped. 

The British had been so roughly handled that they were 
unable to advance for three or four days, until the entire 
army came up. When they did advance, it was only to 
find that Jackson had made good use of the time he had 
gained by his daring assault. He had thrown up breast- 
works of mud and logs from the swamp to the river. At 
first the British tried to batter down these breastworks with 
their cannon, for they had many more guns than the Ameri- 
cans. A terrible artillery duel followed. For an hour 
or two the result seemed in doubt; but the Ameri- 
can gunners showed themselves to be far more skilful than 
their antagonists, and gradually getting the upper hand, 
they finally silenced every piece of British artillery. The 
Americans had used cotton bales in the embrasures, and the 
British hogsheads of sugar; but neither worked well,' for 
the cotton caught fire and the sugar hogsheads were ripped 
and splintered by the round-shot, so that both were aban- 
doned. By the use of red-hot shot the British succeeded in 
setting on fire the American schooner which had caused them 
such annoyance on the evening of the night attack; but she 
had served her purpose, and her destruction caused little 
anxiety to Jackson. 

Having failed in his effort to batter down the American 
breastworks, and the British artillery having been fairly 
worsted by the American, Pakenham decided to try open 
assault. He had ten thousand regular troops, while Jackson 



The Battle of New Orleans 



65 



had under him but little over five thousand men, who were 
trained only as he had himself trained them in his Indian 
campaigns. Not a fourth of them carried bayonets. Both 
Pakenham and the troops under him were fresh from vic- 
tories won over the most renowned marshals of Napoleon, 
and over soldiers that had proved themselves on a hundred 
stricken fields the masters of all others in Continental Eu- 
rope. At Toulouse they had driven Marshal Soult from a 
position infinitely stronger than that held by Jackson, and 
yet Soult had under him a veteran army. At Badajoz, 
Ciudad Rodrigo, and San Sebastian they had carried by 
open assault fortified towns whose strength made the in- 
trenchments of the Americans seem like the mud walls built 
by children, though these towms 
were held by the best soldiers of 
France. With such troops to 
follow him, and with such victo- 
ries behind him in the past, it did 
not seem possible to Pakenham 
that the assault of the terrible 
British infantry could be success- 
fully met by rough backwoods 
riflemen fighting under a general 
as wild and untrained as them- 
selves. 

He decreed that the assault 
should take place on the morning 
of the eighth. Throughout the 
previous night the American ofii- 
cers were on the alert, for they could hear the rumbling 
of artillery in the British camp, the mufiled tread of the bat- 
talions as they were marched to their points in the line, and 
s 




Monument commemorating 
the battle of New Or- 
leans. 



66 A New Nation 

all the smothered din of the preparation for assault. Long 
before dawn the riflemen were awake and drawn up be- 
hind the mud walls, where they lolled at ease, or, leaning 
on their long rifles, peered out through the fog toward the 
camp of their foes. At last the sun rose and the fog 
lifted, showing the scarlet array of the splendid British in- 
fantry. As soon as the air was clear Pakenham gave the 
word, and the heavy columns of red-coated grenadiers and 
kilted Highlanders moved steadily forward. From the 
American breastworks the great guns opened, but not a 
rifle cracked. Three-fourths of the distance was covered, 
and the eager soldiers broke into a run; then sheets of flame 
burst from the breastworks in their front as the wild rifle- 
men of the backwoods rose and fired, line upon line. Un- 
der the sweeping hail the head of the British advance was 
shattered, and the whole column stopped. Then it surged 
forward again, almost to the foot of the breastworks ; but 
not a man lived to reach them, and in a moment more the 
troops broke and ran back. Mad with shame and rage, 
Pakenham rode among them to rally and lead them for- 
ward, and the officers sprang around him, smiting the fugi- 
tives with their swords and cheering on the men who stood. 
For a moment the troops halted, and again came forward 
to the charge; but again they were met by a hail of bullets 
from the backwoods rifles. One shot struck Pakenham 
himself. He reeled and fell from the saddle, and was car- 
ried off the field. The second and third in command fell 
also, and then all attempts at further advance were aban- 
doned, and the British troops ran back to their lines. An- 
other assault had meanwhile been made by a column close 
to the river, the charging soldiers rushing to the top of the 
breastworks; but they were all killed or driven back. A 



The Battle of New Orleans 



67 



body of troops had also been sent across the river, where 
they routed a small detachment of Kentucky militia; but 
they were, of course, recalled when the main assault failed. 
At last the men who had conquered the conquerors of 
Europe had themselves met defeat. Andrew Jackson and 
his rough riflemen had worsted, in fair fight, a far larger 
force of the best of Wellington's veterans, and had accom- 
plished what no French marshal and no French troops had 
been able to accomplish throughout the long war in the 
Spanish peninsula. For a week the sullen British lay in 
their lines; then, abandoning their heavy artillery, they 
marched back to the ships and sailed for Europe. 




Street in old New Orleans. 



'-1^- 



THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER 

" The Star-Spangled Banner " was written during the 
war with Great Britain, which is generally spoken of in his- 
tory as the War of 1812. The British forces had captured 
the city of Washington and destroyed its public buildings, 
and were preparing to attack Baltimore. Francis Scott Key, 
a patriotic American, and, at the time, a citizen of Wash- 
ington, wrote to his mother, on the 26. of September, 1814: 

. . . I am going in the morning to Baltimore, to proceed in 
a flag-vessel to General Ross. Old Dr. Beanes, of Marlboro, is 
taken prisoner by the enemy, who threaten to carry him off. 
Some of his friends have urged me to apply for a flag and go to 
try to procure his release. I , hope to return in about eight or 
ten days, tho' it is uncertain, as I do not know where to find the 
fleet. . . . God bless you, my dear mother. 

F. S. Key. 

The President, James Madison, granted Mr. Key per- 
mission to go, and he went with a friend in a cartel-ship ^ 
under a flag of truce. They found the British fleet at the 
mouth of the Potomac, preparing to attack Baltimore. 

The British admiral agreed to release Dr. Beanes, but 
refused to let him or his friends return that night. They 
were placed on board of another vessel, where they were 
carefully guarded, to prevent them from communicating 

1 Cartel, or cartel-ship: A ship used in making the exchange of 
prisoners of war, or in carrying propositions to an enemy; it is a 
ship of truce, and must not be fired upon nor captured. 



The Star-Spangled Banner 



69 



with their countrymen concerning the proposed attack. The 
vessel was anchored within sight of Fort McHenry, which 
the British fleet proceeded to bombard. 





'HP Ilk mi' I'M 



Francis Scott Key writing "The Star-Spangled 
Banner." 

The three Americans were compelled to endure all night 
long the anxiety of mind produced by the cannonade; and 
they had no means of knowing the result of the attack, until 
" the dawn's early light." They waited that dawn with the 



70 A New Nation 

most intense feeling. When it came, they saw with joy 
that " the old flag was still there." 

It was during this bombardment that Key, pacing the deck 
of the vessel, composed that immortal song, " The Star- 
Spangled Banner." The rude, first draught of it was written 
on the back of a letter, and he wrote it out at full length on 
his arrival in Baltimore. Soon after, it was printed, and 
at once became exceedingly popular. It was sung every- 
where, in public and private, and created intense enthusiasm. 
Although the famous song is no doubt well known, we here 
reprint it in full, as it was originally written by Mr. Key : 

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER 

O say can you see, by the dawn's early light, 

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming; 
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thro' the perilous fight 
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming ; 
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, 
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there ; 
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ? 

From the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep. 

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, 

What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep, 

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? 
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam. 
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream ; 
'T is the star-spangled banner ! — O long may it wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore 
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion 

A home and a country should leave us no more? 

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. 



The Star-Spangled Banner 71 

No refuge could save the hireling and slave 
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave; 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

And thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand 

Between their loved homes and the war's desolation ; 
Blest with vict'ry and peace may this Heaven-rescued land 

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. 
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just. 
And this be our motto : " In God is our Trust " ; 
And the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 




ROBBERS OF THE SEAS 



By Ernest Ingersol 



As the sea has furnished 
opportunities for so much 
good, — for manly exer- 
tion, knowledge of the 
world, and acquaintance 
with people outside of 
one's own country, and 
for gaining wealth, — so 
it has given a chance for 
unscrupulous men to show 
the worst that is in them ; 
and the guarding of shore 
towns and merchant ves- 
sels from piratical attacks 
/ ^ has always been a part of 

the usefulness and duty of a nation's naval force. 

As on land there are robbers and highwaymen, so on the 
ocean robber ships have often been lying in wait for vessels 
loaded with treasure, and have landed crews of marauders 
to make havoc with rich seaboard provinces. Such rob- 
bers on the high seas are termed pirates, and their crime 
was visited by the old laws with torturing punishments; 
yet they were never more daring than when the laws against 
them were severest. 

The word is Greek, and the first pirates who figure in 

72 




Robbers of the Seas 



73 



history are those of the Greek and Byzantine islands and 
coasts — bloody ruffians who originated the amusing method 
of disposing of unransomed prisoners by making them 
" walk the plank," as has been done within the present cen- 
tury. 




Walking the plank. 



The intricate channels and hidden harbors of the ^gean 
Sea long remained a hiding-place of sea-robbers, and are 
still haunted by them, though every few years, from 
Caesar's time till now, the kings of the surrounding countries 



74 A New Nation 

have sent expeditions to break them up. In the sixteenth 
century piracy in that region was especially prevalent. The 
crews then were chiefly Turkish, but the great leaders were 
two renegade Greeks, the brothers Aruck and Hayradin 
Barbarossa (" Redbeard "). 

After their time the power of the pirates continued un- 
der other leaders; and not Algeria alone, but Tripoli, 
Morocco, and even Tunis, harbored piratical vessels in every 
port, and the rulers shared their spoils ; piracy, indeed, was 
the source of their national revenues, and was encouraged 
by the Sultan of Turkey inasmuch as all these states were 
his vassals. 

Every few years some European power — Spain, France, 
Venice, or England — would lose patience, send a fleet, 
and open a campaign that would be successful in destroy- 
ing certain strongholds, releasing a crowd of prisoners, 
and burning or sinking mau}^ ships. The city of Algiers was 
bombarded almost into ruins in 1682, and the job completed 
a year later, after the Algerians had tossed the French consul 
out to the fleet, with their compliments, from the mouth of a 
mortar. They were fond of such jokes. Nevertheless, the 
city speedily recovered, and piracy, complicated by Moslem 
fanaticism and Turkish politics, harassed commerce during 
all the next century, partly because Europe was so busy in 
its own wars that it had no time for outside matters, and 
partly because it was for the advantage of certain nations 
(particularly of Great Britain, which, in possession of 
Gibraltar and Port Mahon, might have suppressed this 
villainy) to let the corsairs prey upon its foes — especially 
France. The actual result was that most or all of the 
European powers fell into the custom of paying to Algiers, 
Tunis, Tripoli, and other rulers of the Barbary (or Berber) 



Robbers of the Seas 75 

States large sums of money as annual tribute to restrain 
them from official depredations upon their coasts and com- 
merce, besides other large payments for the ransom of such 
Christian prisoners as each sultan's lively subjects continued 
to take in spite of treaties. 

In this shameful condition of afifairs the newly independ- 
ent United States was obliged to join during the first years 
of its existence, to secure immuiiity tor our commerce in the 
Mediterranean, because we had not yet had time to create 
a navy. By the end of the century, however, the United 
States was able to defend itself at sea, and in 1801 an- 
swered the insults of Tripoli by bombarding its capital sea- 
port until the dey sued for mercy and promised to behave 
himself. Nevertheless, he needed another lesson, and in 
1803 a second American fleet was sent to the Mediterranean, 
commanded by Preble, in the Constihition, with such sub- 
ordinate officers as Bainbridge, Decatur, Somers, Hull, 
Stewart, Lawrence, and others that later became famous. 
One incident of this campaign, which began by frightening 
the Sultan of Morocco at Tangier into abject submission, 
but was especially directed against Tripoli, is well worth 
remembering. 

Captain Bainbridge, going alone in the fine frigate Phila- 
delphia into the harbor of the city of Tripoli, had unfortu- 
nately run aground, and there, overpowered by the number 
of his enemies afloat and ashore, had been compelled to give 
up his ship, and find himself and all his crew taken prisoners. 
He managed to get word of his misfortune to Commodore 
Preble at Malta, and that officer at once took his fleet to 
Tripoli — Decatur, in the Argus, gallantly capturing on the 
way one of the great lateen-sailed piratical crafts of the 
enemy, which later proved a useful instrument in the contest. 




^--^-f^ L^.s^.^vf' 



A Pirate Fight. 






Robbers of the Seas 77 

The fleet blockaded Tripoli for a while, and shelled the 
fortifications somewhat, just to give the bashaw a hint, and 
to encourage the poor prisoners ; but none of the big vessels 
was able to enter the narrow, tortuous, and ill-charted har- 
bor in the face of the many batteries, under whose guns the 
Philadelphia could be seen at anchor with the Tripolitan flag 
at her main, so they sailed away to Syracuse to make prep- 
arations for reducing this nest of barbarians. Gunboats 
of light draft and mortar-vessels had to be fitted out ; but 
the first thing was to try to carry out a plan that Decatur 
and all his friends had been maturing ever since they had 
arrived — the destruction of the Philadelphia, not only be- 
cause she had been refitted into a powerful weapon in the 
hands of the enemy, but because it was galling to national 
as well as naval pride to see her flying a foreign flag. The 
plan was this : 

Decatur was to take a picked crew of seventy officers and 
men on the captured felucca (renamed Intrepid), and at- 
tempt at night to penetrate to the inner harbor of Tripoli in 
the disguise of a trader, supported as well as possible by the 
gun-brig Siren, also disguised as a merchantman. As his 
pilot was an Italian and a competent linguist, it was hoped 
the ketch could get near enough to set fire to the ship, whirl 
a shotted deck-gun into position to send a shell down the 
main hatch and through her bottom, fire it, and escape before 
the surprise was over. The chances of failure were enough 
to daunt the bravest, yet every man in the fleet wanted to 

go- 
On February 15, 1804, Decatur in his felucca, and Somers 

commanding the brig, found themselves, towards evening, 

again in sight of the town, with its circle of forts crowned 

by the frowning castle. The great Philadelphia stood out 



78 A New Nation 

in bold relief, closely surrounded by two frigates and more 
than twenty gunboats and galleys. From the castle and 
batteries 115 guns could be trained upon an attacking force, 
tesides the fire of the vessels, yet the bold tars on the Intrepid 
did not quail. 

The crew having been sent below, the pilot Catalona took 
the wheel, while Decatur stood beside him, disguised as a 
common sailor. It was now nine o'clock, and bright moon- 
light. Standing steadily in, they rounded to close by the 
Philadelphia, and, boldly hailing her deck-watch, asked the 
privilege of mooring to her chains for the night, explaining 
that they had lost their anchors in the late storm, and so 
forth, until at last consent was given. 

Having dragged themselves close to the frigate, it was the 
work of only a moment to board her with a rush, overpower 
her surprised crew, and make sure of her destruction by 
means of the combustibles and powder they had brought with 
them. Before their task was done, however, they had been 
discovered, and it is almost a miracle that they were able to 
return to their felucca, and make their way out of the harbor, 
through a rain of harmless cannon-balls ; yet they did so, and 
Decatur was justly honored for one of the most gallant ex- 
ploits in naval annals. 

A few weeks later Preble's squadron shelled the pirate city 
and fortresses into ruin, forced Tripoli as well as Algiers and 
Tunis to respect then and thenceforth the American flag, and 
gave these arrogant rulers the new Sensation of paying in- 
stead of receiving money for bad deeds. It put an end to 
the corsairs. 

First Santo Domingo, then Tortugas, and finally Jamaica 
were headquarters of the buccaneers, who were made up of 
men of all nations, united by a desire to prey upon Spain as 



Robbers of the Seas 



79 



a common enemy. They were thousands in number, pos- 
sessed large fleets of ships and boats, were well armed, and 
finally formed a regular organization with a chief and 
under-officers. The most noted of these chiefs, perhaps, 
was Henry Morgan, a Welshman, who was at one time 
captured and taken home to England for trial. To his own 
surprise, instead of being executed, he was knighted by 
Charles II, who had not been at all grieved at seeing Spanish 




The chief buccaneer dividing the booty. 



8o A New Nation 

commerce harassed; and Morgan was returned to Jamaica 
as commissioner of admiralty, where at one time he acted 
as deputy governor, using his opportunity to make it un- 
pleasant for those of the buccaneers with whom he had 
formerly disagreements as to the distribution of prizes. 

At last even England and France, after secretly favoring 
the buccaneers, became roused to the necessity of controlling 
them, and it was with this object in view that a certain 
Captain William Kidd was fitted out at private expense to- 
ward the end of the seventeenth century, and armed with 
King William's commission for seizing pirates and making 
reprisals, England being at war with France. Just why it 
was, nobody has explained, but Captain Kidd spent his time 
in loitering around the coast of Africa, where no pirates 
were to be found, until he grew quite disheartened, and, fear- 
ing to be dismissed by his employers and to be '' mark'd out 
for an unlucky man," he started a little pirate business for 
jbimself, in which he gained more of a certain kind of fame 
than any of the rest; for popular tradition supposes him to 
have hoarded his booty and buried it. " Captain Kidd's 
treasure " has been sought for until the whole eastern coast 
of the United States is honeycombed with diggings for it; 
but probably he had eaten and drunk it up before 1701, 
when he was captured and executed in England. About this 
time, however, and without his valuable aid, the combined 
naval forces of all the nations interested in the commerce 
of the New World broke the power of the buccaneers, and 
their depredations ceased. Their story is one of the wildest, 
most romantic, and most terrible in the history of the world. 

The trade of piracy was carried on during the eighteenth 
century in the region of the West Indies by unorganized 
bands of desperados who had all the faults and none of the 




Buccaneers Landing Treasure. 



82 A New Nation 

greatness of the men they succeeded, and who received Httle 
attention from the world at large. At the beginning of the 
nineteenth century the Barataria pirates came into notice 
on the coast of Louisiana, taking the place of the buccaneers, 
but in a much smaller way. Their leaders, Pierre and John 
Lafitte, carried on business quite openly in New Orleans ; and 
their settlements on the marshy islands along the coast, and 
their " temple," to which persons came out from the city to 
buy goods, were open secrets. But in the War of 1812, al- 
though the British tried to buy their services, they redeemed 
themselves by standing true to the American government, 
which had just been trying to exterminate them, and so they 
won public pardon and an added glamour of romance. 

There is a form of sea-roving which has been at times not 
very different from piracy ; it is called privateering, and his- 
tory shows a good many cases where it has degenerated into 
sea-robbery pure and simple. 

A privateer is a ship, owned by a private citizen or citizens, 
to which authority is given by a government to act as an in- 
dependent war-vessel. Its commission is called a " letter 
of marque" {lettrc de marque in French), entitling it to 
" take, burn, and destroy " a certain enemy's property on 
the sea or in its ports. It has no right, of course, to attack 
any one else. 

The object and plea of the government issuing com- 
missions to privateers is that thus a great many more armed 
vessels can be sent afloat than the government has money to 
equip, and that consequently far more damage will be done to 
the enemy, by crippling his trade and resources, than regular 
men-of-war alone can accomplish. Private capital has been 
willing to take the risk because rewarded by a large share of 
the prizes ; and from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of 



Robbers of the Seas 83 

the eighteenth century this was one of the most profitable 
of marine industries, for then nearly universal wars made 
almost any capture legitimate. In the earlier times even the 
limited regulation that came later was absent, and there was 
small choice between a privateer and a pirate. 




THE BALLAD OF CAPTAIN KIDD 

[The following are a few of the many verses of a ballad written at 
the time of Capt. Kidd.] 

My name was Robert Kidd, as I sailed, as I sailed, 
My name was Robert Kidd, as I sailed; 
My name was Robert Kidd, 
God's laws I did forbid. 
And so wickedly I did, as I sailed. 

I was sick, and nigh to death, as I sailed, as I sailed; 
I was sick and nigh to death as I sailed ; 
I was sick and nigh to death. 
And I vowed at every breath. 
To walk in wisdom's ways, as I sailed. 

I thought I was undone, as I sailed, as I sailed; 
I thought I was undone, as I sailed; 

I thought I was undone. 

And my wicked glass had run, 
But health did soon return, as I sailed. 




Captain Kidd burying his treasure. 



Robbers of the Seas 85 

I spied the ships of Spain, as I sailed, as I sailed; 
I spied the ships of Spain, as I sailed ; 

I spied the ships of Spain, 

I fired on them amain. 
Till most of them were slain, as I sailed. 

I'd ninety bars of gold, as I sailed, as I sailed; 
I "d ninety bars of gold, as I sailed ; 

I 'd ninety bars of gold, 

And dollars manifold, 
With riches uncontrolled, as I sailed. 



Thus being overtaken at last, I must die, I must die ; 
Thus being o'ertaken at last, I must die ; 
Thus being o'ertaken at last 
And into prison cast, 
And sentence being passed, I must die. 



OLD GEORGETOWN 

" three miles from the capitol " 

By John Williamson Palmer 

When the author of " The Star-spangled Banner " 
emerged from his quiet domicile by the Aqueduct, and went 
for a pensive ramble, as was his custom of an afternoon, 
he mounted the winding way to the heights of Georgetown 
to find a point of vantage there for his more comprehensive 
contemplation of the prospect. 

Very dear to the eye of that pensive singer of piety and 
patriotism were the several landmarks that loomed impress- 
ively above the river mists. 

Between the Convent and the creek the heights were 
crowned with the mansions of prosperous and influential 
citizens whose names are locally historic now : " Monterey," 
seat of the Linthicums, occupied by Mr. Calhoun, then Sec- 
retary of War in the Monroe cabinet; "Tudor Place," the 
garden home of Thomas Peter, Esq., notable in the annals 
of Georgetown; the storied residence of Brooke Williams, 
once tenanted by Sir John Crampton, British ambassador, 
and later by the French minister ; and other houses of much 
social celebrity. 

Low on the incline, but slowly creeping hillward from the 
river, the quaint and kindly burgh looked idly out through 
dormer-windows on a lounging, drowsy world, and sociably 
shouldered the highway with all its stoops and sloping cellar 

86 



Old Georgetown 87 

doors; and comfortable little boys and girls, unembarrassed 
by considerations of decorum, and careless of rents and 
maternal rages, slid down the cellar doors, and watched the 
world go by — a world of shad-fishers, and fowlers of 
swans and ducks, and pliers of pirogues^ and pungies; a 
world wherein the market-master and the hay-weigher, the 
constable and the town-crier, the watchman and the lamp- 
lighter, were personages of exalted privileges and mysteri- 
ous powers ; where a black Juliet, gaudily coifed in bandana, 
and hoop-ringed as to her ears, who dispensed English 
muffins to the outcry of a bell, and a blacker Romeo, amply 
aproned, who chanted on street corners the succulent glories 
of hot corn and baked pears, were ever the chroniclers, con- 
fidants, and oracles for the children, white or black, on Key 
and Congress streets and the Causeway, on Bridge and 
Falls streets. West Landing and Duck Lane. 

A characteristic feature of the time and place was the 
Conestoga wagon, freighted with farm produce from 
Pennsylvania, ark-like under its long tunnel of canvas, and 
drawn by five or seven big, benevolent horses, each with a 
chime of bells making melodious announcement of butter, 
eggs, and fowls, garden truck, sauerkraut, schiuicrkcisc, and 
apple-butter ; and always a hen-coop hung at the stern, and 
a dog, ill-favored and unsociable, trotted between the hind 
wheels. 

No less characteristic and picturesque was the pier, the 
landing-place for the lighter craft that flitted beween the 
river-landings in excursions of business or pleasure. Hither 

1 G. W. P. Custis, in his " Recollections and Private Memoirs," de- 
scribes the "pirogue" in which Washington, with a party of his 
friends, made the first survey of the Potomac above tide-water, as 
a canoe " hollowed out of a great poplar tree, haifled on a wagon to 
the bank of the Monocacy, and there launched." 



88 A New Nation 

came the fishermen to mend their great nets, and the fowlers 
with their ducking-guns and dogs, and the darkies, old and 
young, to lend a hand on the flats, or in the blinds or the 
boats, or in the fish-houses that flanked the beach at con- 
venient points. Hither came country wagons from all the 
neighboring counties, to convey the shad or rockfish to in- 
land markets. In April and May of 1828 Potomac shad 
were sold on the wharves of Georgetown for five dollars a 
hundred. In the early spring of 1826, rockfish weighing 
from twenty-five to one hundred pounds were netted in 
great numbers; on the Virginia side of the river, at Syca- 
more Landing, thirty miles below Washington, four hundred 
and fifty of these noble fish were taken at one draught of the 
seine. The multitudinous fleet of small craft, bright, brisk, 
and bustling, that flitted to and fro between the fishing- 
grounds and the landings, — the boatmen shouting, singing, 
bantering each other, — imparted to the beautiful river the 
aspect of a festal panorama. 

In the late fall and winter myriads of canvasback ducks, 
then commonly called " whitebacks," came to feed on the 
small white celery that grew so abundantly in the swamps 
and flats of the Potomac and the Susquehanna. Formerly 
on James River they were known as " sheldrake " ; but their 
favorite provender failing there, they flocked to the more 
bountiful fields between Craney and Analostan islands. 
They gathered in clouds of thousands, obscuring the river, 
and storming the air with multitudinous clangor, only to be 
fusilladed from blinds, or " tolled " within range by dogs 
trained to play and leap, or by the waving of a red-and-yel- 
low handkerchief luring them by their foolish and fatal 
curiosity. Tom Davis, the trusty fowler of Mount Vernon, 
with his Newfoundland dog " Gunner," often brought 



Old Georgetown 89 

down at a single discharge of his clumsy British " piece " as 
many ducks as might serve the larder for a week. 

Even so the snow-white swans were tolled as they floated 
in fleets of hundreds near the shore at the mouth of the 
Occoquan : superbly silly birds, spreading from six to seven 
feet of flashing pinions, clanging and trumpeting in melo- 
dious clamor that on still evenings might be heard by the 
dwellers on the creeks three miles away, and lured to their 
death by the diverting puzzle of a cunning puppy's antics. 

Similarly spectacular was the sport that went to the tak- 
ing of the ortolan ^ on dark October nights on the flats near 
Georgetown, when the birds had settled to their perches 
on the reeds and wild oats. Amidshi-ps across the gun- 
wale of a canoe stout boards were laid to make a platform, 
and these were sheathed with clay to form a hearth. 
Here a fire of lightwood was kindled, and the boat crept 
noiselessly to the flats, a boy feeding the flame as it 
glided in among the perches where the birds, stupefied by 
the glare, incapable of flight or outcry, and in plain sight 
of the hunters, were clubbed with light paddles, and so 
killed or captured by scores. Thirty or forty dozen were 
often taken by one canoe. 

In John Adams's time a witty French lady described 
Georgetown as "a town of houses without streets, as 
Washington is a town of streets without houses"; and 
Mrs. Adams, writing to her daughter in November, 1800, 
says : " Woods are all you see from Baltimore until 
you reach the City, which is only so in name — here and 
there a small cot without a window appearing in the For- 
est, through which you travel miles without seeing a Hu- 

1 Sora of Virginia, rail of Pennsylvania. 



90 A New Nation 

man being." Oliver Wolcott, writing to his wife on 
the Fourth of July, 1800, says: "There is one good 
Tavern about forty rods from the Capitol, and several 
other houses are building; but I do not perceive how 
the members of Congress can possibly secure lodgings un- 
less they will consent to live like Scholars in a college or 
Monks in a monastery, crowded ten or twenty in one 
house, and utterly secluded from Society. The only re- 
source for such as wish to live Comfortably will be found 
in Georgetown, three miles distant, over as bad a Road 
in winter as the clay grounds near Hartford." 

But thirty years later a four-horse coach plied almost 
hourly between Georgetown and Washington for the ac- 
commodation of the patres (and matres) conscripti, car- 
rying twelve inside at " a levy " each. From Gadsby's 
hotel, the " Indian Queen," and the Mansion House, in 
Washington, stages ran to Baltimore for a fare of $2.50; 
there were daily steamboats to Alexandria, Norfolk, and 
Fredericksburg, and a " mail-stage " every evening for 
Pittsburg and Wheeling. 

Meanwhile, Georgetown had grown to be a place of 
homes and congressmen's lodgings — a town of spindle- 
legged sideboards, tall clocks, marquetry tables, claw- 
and-ball chairs, screens and andirons and warming-pans. 
The " Union Tavern," a hostelry of fashionable preten- 
sions during the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, 
and Monroe, had the honor to entertain many imposing 
personages, such as Louis Philippe and Talleyrand, Volney 
and Baron Humboldt, Jerome Bonaparte and Lafayette. 
Georgetown had already become the " court end," a tryst- 
ing place and rendezvous for persons of quality, while 
as yet Washington was but a huddle of booths,' taverns, 



Old Georgetown 91 

and gambling-houses set round about a political race- 
course. 

At the houses of the cabinet and the wealthier members 
of the Senate and the House there were endless entertain- 
ments and evening parties in the season, with suppers, punch, 
and cards, and cotillions and contra-dances to the music of 
harp and violin. 

To the assemblies, always exclusive and ceremonious, 
and managed by a committee who dispensed their com- 
plimentary cards with the superfine discrimination of Al- 
mack's, officers of the army and navy and members of the 
diplomatic corps came in regimentals and regalia, while 
plain citizens disported themselves in pumps, silk stock- 
ings, ruffled cravats, two or even three waistcoats of dif- 
ferent colors, the dangling fob-ribbon with gold buckles 
and a big seal of topaz or carnelian, regulation frock- 
coats of green or claret-colored cloth with huge lapels and 
gilded buttons, and Hessian top-boots with gold tassels. 
Certain of the exquisites affected ultra-fashionable full 
dress, which prescribed coats with great rolling collars 
and short waists, voluminous cravats of white cambric, 
and small-clothes or tight trousers. 

We read of skirts of five breadths, a quarter of a yard 
each, of the favorite India crape, coquettishly short for 
the freer display of the slipper and silk stocking match- 
ing the color of the gown and fastened with ribbons crossed 
over the instep and ankle. The low waist came to an end 
abruptly under the arms, which were covered with gloves so 
fine that they were sometimes stowed cunningly in the shell 
of an English walnut. The hair, dressed high, was crowned 
with a comb of tortoise-shell, while turbans and ostrich- 
feathers were the peculiar ensigns of wives and matrons. 



92 A New Nation 

After the Revolution the minuet, which had long held 
the place of honor in the select assemblies, began to be 
slighted, fashionable favor turning capriciously to less exact- 
ing and more democratic styles of diversion for the fantastic 
toe. General Washington, whose performance in the stately 
dance was impressive, appeared in that function for the last 
time in 1781, at a ball given in Fredericksburg in honor of 
the French and American officers on their return from the 
capitulation of Yorktown. The last birth-night ball he at- 
tended was in Alexandria in 1798. 

John Pendleton Kennedy, author of " Swallow Barn " 
and " Horseshoe Robinson," himself a conspicuous person- 
ality in the clubs and fashionable gatherings of 1820, was 
wont to gossip pleasantly concerning the wits and beaus who 
pranced so gallantly on the streets of Baltimore, Alexandria, 
and Georgetown in his childhood. " Cavaliers of the old 
school, full of starch and powder; most of them the iron 
gentlemen of the Revolution, with leathery faces ; old 
campaigners, displaying military carriage and much impos- 
ing swagger; convivial blades, too, and heroes of long 
stories; all in three-cornered hats and wigs and buff coats 
with narrow capes, long backs, and hip pockets, small- 
clothes that barely reached the knee, striped stockings, and 
great buckles to their shoes; and then the long steel chains 
that hung half-way to the knee, dangling with seals shaped 
like the sounding-board of a pulpit ! " 

These oppressive gentry made the little town fairly jump 
with the ring of their gold-headed canes on the pavement, 
" especially when the superfine swashbuckler accosted a lady 
in the street with a bow that required a whole sidewalk to 
make it in — the wide scrape of the foot, and the cane thrust 
with a flourish under the left arm till it stuck out behind 



Old Georgetown 93 

along with the stiff cue ! And nothing could be more 
piquant than the pretty cox-combi-y of the lady, as she re- 
ciprocated the salutation with a deep, low curtsy, her chin 
bridled to her breast." 

The turnpike was a diverting novelty and the steamboat 
a wonder, when Dolly Madison, inspiring sprite of tea- 
parties and loo, and idol of the common people, warm- 
hearted and prodigally hospitable, cleverly blending gracious 
dignity with a frank condescension, queened it so kindly in 
her spangled turbans, paradise plumes, and resetted shoes, 
and ruled her little world of lovers with a snuff-box. It 
was at one of her receptions in Georgetown that an amus- 
ing incident occurred, remembered for the characteristic 
tact it illustrated. A shy young fellow from the country 
had come to pay his respects to the star of the hour. Mrs. 
Madison observed him neglected and embarrassed, and ap- 
proaching him quickly with extended hand, so startled the 
abashed and timid lad, who had just been served with coffee, 
that he dropped the saucer and thrust the half-filled cup 
into his pocket. "How the crowd jostles!" said the de- 
lightful Dolly. " Let me have the servant bring you coffee. 
And how is your charming mother? We were friends, you 
know." Ever " mistress of herself, though china fall," 
that dazed, dumbfounded boy was not less interesting to her 
gracious solicitude than the justices of the Supreme Court 
in their gowns, or the diplomatic corps in their regalia, or 
distinguished officers of the army and navy in the luster of 
full uniform — all dancing attendance at those memorable 
levees on New Year's day and the Fourth of July, when 
Dolly Madison was " at home " to kings, presidents, and 
the people, without distinction of persons. 

She was preeminently mistress of the arts of society, and 



94 



A New Nation 



her entertainments in Georgetown and Washington were 
events of memorable import in the pohtical as well as in the 
social world. Sectional rancor or the spites of party had 
no place at her teas and receptions. A ball that she gave 
in 1824 is chronicled as the " grand ball " of that time. 
Webster and Clay, Calhoun, Randolph, and Jackson, were 
there in their pride of blue coats and gilt buttons, buff waist- 
coats, silk stockings, and pumps ; while her democratic 
majesty was singular and conspicuous in a suit of steel — 
her gown of " steel lama," with brilliant ornaments of cut 
steel in her hair and on her throat, and arms. Her por- 
trait by Leslie, a reflection from the court of Napoleon, 
shows an American woman of the republican court in her 
proper panoply of grace, culture, and distinction. 





The obverse and reverse of a Washington one-cent piece, dated 1791. 

These one-cent pieces are now rare. The coin from which the pictures were made 
was placed under the glass of the Sharpless pastel portrait of Wash- 
ington, now owned by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. 




ROBERT FULTON AND THE CLERMONT 
By Alice Crary Sutcliffe 

Great-Granddaughter of the Inventor 



THE EARLY LIFE OF FULTON 

The farm-house at . Little Britain, Lancaster County, 
Pennsylvania, to which the senior Fulton brought his fam- 
ily in the early spring of 1765 is still standing at the country 
cross-roads. There Robert Fulton the inventor was born 
on November 14, 1765. 

In 1844 the township of Little Britain was resurveyed, 
and a new section was set aside, to be known as " Fulton 
Township," in honor of the child who lived for the first 
few months of his eventful life within its quiet borders. 

There are several anecdotes which relate to Robert Ful- 
ton's early interest in mechanics -7- the first steps of progress 
toward his later skill. In 1773, when he was eight years 
old, his mother, having previously taught him to read and 
write, sent him to a school kept by Mr. Caleb Johnson, a 
Quaker gentleman of pronounced Tory principles — so pro- 
nounced, in fact, that he narrowly escaped with his life dur- 

95 



96 A New Nation 

ing the Revolution. But Robert Fulton did not care for 
books, and he began at a very early age to search for prob- 




Robert Fulton. 

From t}ie i.a'mting by B<>iijomln Wert. Owned by E. P. Ludlow Cla- 



lems never mastered and bound in print. This greatly dis- 
tressed the Quaker teacher, who spared not the rod; and 
it is said that in administering such discipline on the hand 



Robert Fulton and the Clermont 97 

of Robert Fulton, he one day testily exclaimed : " There, 
that will make you do something!" To which Robert, 
with folded arms, replied : " Sir, I came to have something 
beaten into my brains, and not into my knuckles." With- 
out doubt he was a trial to his teacher. 

He entered school one day very late, and when the master 
inquired the reason, Robert with frank interest replied that 
he had been at Nicholas Miller's shop pounding out lead for 
a pencil. " It is the very best I ever had, sir," he affirmed 
as he displayed his product. The master, after an examina- 
tion of the pencil, pronounced it excellent. When Robert's 
mother, who had been distressed by his lack of application 
to his studies, expressed to his teacher her pleasure at signs 
of improvement, the latter confided to her that Robert had 
said to him: " My head is so full of original notions that 
there is no vacant chamber to store away the contents of 
dusty books," 

These incidents to the contrary, it is nevertheless true 
that Robert Fulton did absorb a good knowledge of the 
rudiments of education. 

In 1777, Congress held session in the old court house at 
Lancaster, and during this time the town became famous 
as a depot of supplies for the American forces. Rifles, 
blankets, and clothing were manufactured there, powder for 
the troops was stored in the town, and in that year a certain 
Paul Zantzinger furnished General Wayne's men with 650 
suits of uniform. 

Fulton was nicknamed by his comrades " Quicksilver 
Bob," because of his frequent purchases of the illusive and 
glittering metal, used by him in experiments which he de- 
clined to describe. Before this time he had drawn designs 
for firearms and had become expert in experimenting with 



98 A New Nation 

them in order to determine the comparative carrying dis- 
tance of different bores and balls. He is known to have 
manufactured an airgun in the year 1779, but there is no 
record of its success. 

At the age of seventeen, Fulton left Lancaster to seek his 
fortune, taking up his residence in Philadelphia as a painter 
of portraits and miniatures. His papers are singularly 
devoid of reference to these years. He was never retro- 
spective, but eager for new accomplishment. Life offered 
him delights in art and science, and his industry appears to 
have made alternate choice in these fields of thought and en- 
terprise. His energy was indefatigable; he not only earned 
his own living, but sent remittances to his mother in Lan- 
caster. He apparently seized upon any form of employ- 
ment which could be secured by personal endeavor. 

He enjoyed a personal friendship with Benjamin Frank- 
lin, who gave him unusual attention and kindness. 

In 1786, Robert Fulton sailed for England, bearing nu- 
merous letters of introduction to distinguished Americans 
abroad. Among these, a letter from his friend and patron 
Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin West, the Pennsylvania ar- 
tist who had won high honor in London, was of special help 
in launching Mr. Fulton in the art circles of Europe, and 
the previous intimacy between the West and Fulton fami- 
lies, and the pronounced similarity in tastes and ambitions, 
seem to have attracted them to an immediate and intimate 
comradeship. 

fulton's genius 

At no time since his death, in the prime of life, in 181 5, 
has the public ceased to take an interest in the personality 



Robert Fulton and the Clermont 99 



of Robert Fulton. Since the first trip of the Clermont, in 
1807, past the PaHsades of the Hudson, the whole world, 
in ever-expanding measure, has enjoyed with ungrudging 
recognition the fruit of his inventive genius. 

Two years after his death, his friend Cadwallader Golden 
ascribed his achievements to " that rare union of genius and 
science with practical knowledge which Mr. Fulton so hap- 
pily possessed." In the light of present-day opportunities 
for scientific study and experiment, his friends' well-con- 
sidered praise amounts only to say that Fulton's mechani- 
cal genius was intuitive, and marched to practical results by 
new yet well-measured steps, along the path of individual 
experiment. He certainly profited by the vague ideas and 
false starts of others, but he brought to their development 
an inventive power, an insight into mechanical principle, 
and a vision of future usefulness, that must ever find him a 
high place among the 
creative geniuses and 
benefactors of man- 
kind. . . . The bil- 
lions of money invested 
in battle-ships and sub- 
marine torpedo-boats in 
our day indicate how 
thoroughly Fulton was 
ahead of his age ; though 
they do not quite con- 
vince us of the philoso- 
phy of his motive for 
trying to do away with 
the terror and wastefulness of war by the application of a 
concentrated terror. But the minor fame of his warlike 




Obverse of a medal issued by tbe Fulton 
Institute, of Lancaster, Pa. 



100 



A New Nation 



appliances is merged in the glory of his achievements for 



commerce and navigation. 



FULTON S FOLLY 



Prior to the comple- 
tion of the Clermont, 
a throng of idle- 
minded men congre- 
gated in the vicinity, 
called it " Fulton's 
Folly " and scoffed at 
its possibilities. The 
actual safety of the in- 
vention was seriously 
menaced by this lawless 

throng and by the careless piloting of sloops in the slip. 

After one threatened mishap Fulton found it necessary to 

guard the boat. 




Fulton's Inkstand. 



FULTON S OWN DESCRIPTION 



" My first steamboat on the Hudson's River was 150 feet 
long, 13 feet wide, drawing 2 feet of water, bow and stern 
60 degrees; she displaced 36.40 cubic feet, equal 100 tons of 
water; her bow presented 26 feet to the water, plus and 
minus the resistance of i foot running 4 miles an hour." 

Fulton did not take out a patent for his steamboat until 
February, 1809, and his second patent was secured October 
2, 1810. 



Robert Fulton and the Clermont lOi 

HISTORIC FIRST VOYAGE OF THE CLERMONT 

On August 17, 1807, the Clermont made its memorable 
first voyage up the Hudson. At one o'clock the boat was 
loosed from its moorings at a dock on the North River near 
the State's Prison, Greenwich Village. 

Fulton's feelings at this crisis are set down in a letter to 
an unknown friend, quoted as part of a reminiscence by the 
late Judge Story in Sanders' early " History of Schenec- 
tady," and secured by Mrs. Robert Fulton Blight from al- 
leged original. 

My dear Sir: 

The moment arrived in which the word was to be given for 
the boat to move. My friends were in groups on the deck. There 
was anxiety mixed with fear among them. They were silent, sad 
and weary. I read in their looks nothing but disaster, and al- 
most repented of my efforts. The signal was given and the boat 
moved on a short distance and then stopped and became immov- 
able. To the silence of the preceding moment, now succeeded 
murmurs of discontent, and agitations, and whispers and shrugs. 
I could hear distinctly repeated — " I told you it was so ; it is a 
foolish scheme : I wish we were well out of it." 

I elevated myself upon a platform and addressed the assembly. 
I stated that I knew not what was the matter, but if they would 
be quiet and indulge me for half an hour, I would either go on 
or abandon the voyage for that time. This short respite was 
conceded without objection. I went below and examined the ma- 
chinery, and discovered that the cause was a slight maladjust- 
ment of some of the work. In a short time it was obviated. The 
boat was again put in motion. She continued to move on. All 
were still incredulous. None seemed willing to trust the evidence 
of their own senses. We left the fair city of New York; we 
passed through the romantic and ever-varying scenery of the 
Highlands; we descried the clustering houses of Albany; we 



102 



A New Nation 



reached its shores, — and then, even then, when all seemed achieved, 
I was the victim of disappointment. 

Imagination superseded the influence of fact. It was then 
doubted if it could be done again, or if done, it was doubted if it 
could be made of any great value. 

Yours, R. Fulton. 



After her return from the first voyage up the Hudson, 
the Clermont was left at the New York dock for more than 
two weeks. This time was considered necessary by Ful- 
ton and Livingston to fit the boat for regular traffic and to 
make certain improvements which Fulton notes in the fol- 
lowing letter to the Chancellor, who had remained at his 
country place. 

New York, 
Saturday, the 28 [29th] of August, 1807. 
Dear Sir: 

On Saturday I wrote you that I arrived here on Friday at four 

o'clock, which made my 
voyage from Albany ex- 
actly thirty hours. We 
had a little wind on 
Friday morning, but no 
waves which produced 
any effect. I have been 
making every exertion 
to get off on Monday 
inorning, but there has 
been much work to do 
— boarding all the sides, 
decking over the boiler 
and works, finishing each 
cabin with twelve berths 
to make them comfort- 
able, and strengthening 
many parts of the iron work. So much to do, and the rain, which 
delays the caulkers, will, I fear, not let me off till Wednesday 




Compass used on the Clermont. 



Robert Fulton and the Clermont 103 



morning. Then, how- 
ever, the boat will be as 
complete as she can be 
made — all strong and in 
good order and the men 
well organized, and 1 
hope, nothing- to do but 
to run her for six weeks 
or two months. The first 
week, that is if she starts 
on Wednesday, she will 
make one trip to Albany 
and back. Every succeed- 
ing week she will run 
three trips — that is, two 
to Albany and one to New 
York, or two to New 
York and one to Albany, 
always having Sunday and 
four nights for rest to the 
crew. By carrying for 
the usual price there can 
be no doubt but the steam- 
boat will have the pref- 
erence because of the 
certainty and agreeable 
movements. I have seen 
the captain of the fine 
sloop from Hudson. He 
says the average of his 
passages have been forty- 
eight hours. For the 
steamboat it would have 
been thirty certain. The persons who came down with me were so 
much pleased that they said were she established to run periodically 
they would never go in anything else. I will have her registered 
and everything done which I can recollect. Everything looks well 
and I have no doubt will be very productive. 

Yours truly, Robert Fulton. 




Statue of Robert Fulton at the Fulton 
Ferry-house, Brooklyn, New York. 



104 A New Nation 

The following postscript ends the letter of August 29th : ^ 

You may look for me Thursday morning about seven o'clock. 
I think it would be well to write to your brother Edward to get 
information on the velocity of the Mississippi, the size and form 
of the boats used, the number of hands and quantity of tons in 
each boat, the number of miles they make against the current in. 
twelve hours, and the quantity of tons which go up the river in a 
year. On this point beg of him to be accurate. 

On the 2nd of September, the necessary equipment and 
alterations having been completed, Fulton inserted his first 
advertisement in The Albany Gazette, and the Evening Post 
of New York. It read : 

THE NORTH RIVER STEAMBOAT 

Will leave Pauler's Hook Ferry on Friday the 4*^ of Sep- 
tember, at 6 in the morning, and arrive at Albany, on Sat- 
urday, at 6 in the afternoon. 

Provisions, good berths and accommodations are pro- 
vided. 

The charge to each passenger is as follows : 

To Newburgh $3 time 14 liours 

To Poughkeepsie 4 17 

To Esopus 4J/2 20 

To Hudson 5 30 

To Albany 7 36 

For places, apply to Wm. Vandervoort, N°- 48 Courtlandt- 
street, on the corner of Greenwich-street. 

Way passengers to Tarry Town, etc., etc., will apply to 
the captain on board. 

1 Robert Fulton to Robert R. Livingston, Saturday, 28 [29th] Au- 
gust, 1807. Original formerly in possession of Mr. Clermont Living- 
ston. 



Robert Fulton and the Clermoizt 105 

The Steam Boat will leave Albany on Monday the 7'^ 
of September at 6 in the morning and arrive at New-York 
on Tuesday at 6 in the evening. 

She will leave New-York on Wednesday morning at 6, 
and arrive at Albany on Thursday evening at 6 in the even- 
ing. 

She will leave Albany on Friday morning at 6, and ar- 
rive at New- York on Saturday evening at 6. — Thus per- 
forming two voyages from Albany and one from New- 
York within the week. On Monday the 14**^, and Friday 
the i8''\ she will leave New- York at 6 in the morning, and 
Albany on the 16*^, at 6 in the morning, after which the ar- 
rangements for her departure will be announced. 

The Steam Boat being thoroughly repaired, and precau- 
tion taken that injury shall not be done to her wheels in 
future, it is intended to run her as a PACKET for the re- 
mainder of the season. She will take her departure from 
New-York and Albany at 9 o'clock in the morning, and al- 
ways perform her voyage in from 30 to 36 hours. 




THE MISSIONS OF ALTA CALIFORNIA 



By John T. Doyle 



'^o#4a1 




Cross at ]\Ionterey. 



Although the 
peninsula of Low- 
er California was 
discovered as early 
as the year 1534, 
and many attempts 
were made to col- 
onize it, it re- 
mained wholly un- 
occupied by Spain 
down to 1697.' 
In February of 
that year two Jes- 



uit fathers, Juan Maria Salvatierra and Francisco Eusebio 
Kino, asked permission to attempt the spiritual conquest of 
the country, which was granted on condition that the king 
should not be called on for any part of the expense involved, 
and that possession should be taken distinctly in the name of 
the Spanish crown. Armed with this authority and the sanc- 
tion of their superiors in the order, the two missionaries set 
about collecting funds for their undertaking, and in a short 
time succeeded in obtaining sufficient means to commence it. 
These funds, subscribed by charitable individuals, whose 
names and contributions the gratitude of the fathers has 
preserved for us to this day, increased, in progress of time, 

106 



The Missions of Alta California 107 

to an aggregate of sufficient importance to find frequent 
mention in Mexican legislation and history, under the name 
of the " Pious Fund of the Californias." It constituted 
afterwards the endowment and support of the Missions on 
all the west coast of the continent as far north as claimed by- 
Spain, the whole of which was called by the general name of 
the Californias. 

The thirteen Missions founded by the Jesuits in Lower 
California extended from Cape San Lucas, at the extremity 
of the peninsula, northwards. Details regarding them are 
deemed out of place here : they were in a flourishing con- 
dition at the time of the expulsion of the order in 1768, and 
the establishments remain to the present day ; ruined indeed 
and deserted by the population that once clustered round 
them, but attesting still the pious zeal of their founders. 

Father Michael Joseph Serra was born in the island of 
Majorca, in the year 171 3. After pursuing his studies in 
the Lullian University there he evinced a preference for a 
religious life, and was admitted to the order of St. Francis, 
taking instead of his baptismal names that of Junipero, by 
which only he is known in history. The Franciscans and 
Dominicans were, about that period, extending their Mis- 
sions among the Indians of America in rivalry with the 
Jesuits, and Father Serra with three of his fellow-members 
became inflamed with the desire to take part in these pious 
enterprises. The other associates were Fathers Rafael Ver- 
ger, Francisco Palou, and Juan Crespi. They obtained per- 
mission to join a body of missionaries which in 1749 was 
assembled at Cadiz to embark for the New World, and after 
a ninety-nine days' voyage they landed in Vera Cruz. 

After many years' successful missionary efforts in the 
Sierra Gorda, Father Serra was selected to take principal 



io8 



A New Nation 




"'*B^iliii«^^^^^^^^ 



Mission of San Antonio of Padua, about twenty miles from Monterey. 

charge of the Missions of Cahfornia, now confided to the 
Franciscans, and he arrived at the port of Loreto with fif- 
teen associates on the 2nd of April, 1768. After having 
made the necessary disposition for occupying the various 
estabhshments of the peninsula — a task which occupied 
many months, as they extended over a territory seven hun- 
dred miles in length — he was ready to cooperate with 
Galvez in the subjection of Upper California to the practical 
dominion of the crown of Spain and the Christian religion. 
Two expeditions were organized for the purpose, one by sea 
and the other by land. The latter was formed into two de- 
tachments, which, after a toilsome march from San Fer- 
nando de Vellicata, on the Indian frontier of Lower Cali- 
fornia, were, on the ist of July, 1769, reunited at the bay 
of San Diego, where the schooners San Carlos and San 



The Missions of Alta California 109 



Antonio, which had come up the coast to meet them, were 
also safely anchored. San Diego was a place of which at 
that time nothing more was known than that there was an 
excellent harbor, which had been visited by Sebastian Viz- 
cayno in his voyage of 1601— 2. This journey to San Diego 
occupied ninety-three days, during which Father Serra suf- 
fered excruciatingly from an injury to one of his legs, so 
that at times he could neither walk nor ride. 

The first Mission of Upper California was founded at San 
Diego, and before the lapse of a fortnight a second expedi- 
tion was organized, under Don Caspar de Portola, which 
was directed to proceed up the coast as far as Monterey and 
to found a Mission there. Monterey was also a place made 
known to Spanish geographers by Vizcayno's voyage of 
1602, in his report of which he had described it in glowing 
terms as a magnificent harbor, fit to shelter the navies of 
the world. Fathers Juan Crespi and Francisco Comez 
.were the chaplains of this expe- 
dition, which was also to have 
the cooperation of the two schoon- 
ers, which were directed to the 
same destination. 

How this land expedition toiled 
up the coast from San Diego, of 
its " moving accidents by flood 
and field, of hairbreadth 'scapes, 
. . , of antres vast and des- 
erts idle, rough quarries, rocks 
and hills," of how in its search 
for Monterey it stumbled on the 
bay of San Francisco and first 1 

made known to civilized man the Pulpit of San Buenaventura. 




no A New Nation 

garden of the present State of California, I have related 
elsewhere and will not here repeat. Suffice it to sa}^ that 
having penetrated as far up the coast and over the Coast 
Range as to look down from the crest over what is now 
Searsville on the broad expanse of the Santa Clara Valley, 
and on the great estuary which its historian described as a 
" Mediterranean sea," the expedition, compelled by the ap- 
proach of winter, the scarcity of food, and the increasing 
hostility of the aborigines, turned on the nth of November 
to retrace its steps to San Diego. 

The effort at missionary colonization was not, however, 
abandoned. In 1770 another expedition moved up the 
coast, following the track of the first explorers, whose diary 
was their guide, and founded the Mission of San Carlos on 
the bay of Monterey, close to which was established the 
presidio of the same name. The place first selected proved 
unsuitable for the site of a Mission, and before the close of 
1 77 1 the establishment was removed a few miles to the south- 
ward and planted on the banks of the Carmel River, over- 
looking the charming little bay of the same name. This new 
foundation was called " El Carmelo." The presidio re- 
tained its site and subsequently became the capital city of 
the department. 

Monterey has become in our day a famous watering- 
place frequented by visitors from the ends of the earth, and 
the ancient Mission, El Carmelo, now little better than a 
ruin, continues to attract the attention of travelers from its 
picturesque site and from the fact that it contains the re- 
mains of the venerable men whose pious efforts created the 
Missions and laid the foundations of civilization in Cali- 
fornia. There were interred the remains of Fathers Juni- 
pero Serra, Juan Crespi, and Rafael Verger. 



The Missions of Alta California ill 

San Diego and Monterey served to mark the extremes of 
the first Spanish occupancy; the interval was filled up and 
the area of missionary conquest gradually extended by 
other similar establishments. The names of these institu- 
tions, founded in rapid succession, are as follows : 

1771. — San Gabriel, San Fernando, San Antonio. 

1772. — San Luis Qbispo. 

1776. — San Juan Capistrano, San Francisco de Assisi. 

1777. — Santa Clara. 

1782. — San Buenaventura. 

1786. — Santa Barbara. 

1787. — La Purissima. 

1791. — La Soledad, and Santa Cruz. 

1797. — San Juan Bautista, San Jose, San Miguel. 

1798. — San Luis Rey. 

1802. — Santa Ynez. 

After this missionary efforts seem to have relaxed, but a 
revival at a later date led to the foundation of San Rafael 
in 1 81 7, and San Francisco Solano in 1823. Sonoma, at 
which this last was located, was as far north as the mission- 
aries penetrated. 

These Missions were, of course, designed for the instruc- 
tion of the rude aborigines in the truths of Christianity and 
in the arts of civilized life. 

The Franciscans, who succeeded the Jesuits in California, 
followed their system. In order to induce the Indians to 
abandon their nomadic tribal life, and to exchange their 
reliance for food on the fruits of the chase and the spon- 
taneous products of the forest for the ways of civilized men, 
they were at first supplied by the missionaries with food and 
clothing and afterwards taught to cultivate the earth and 
support themselves. Timber was felled wherever accessi- 



112 



A New Nation 



ble and transported to a suitable site, where, with unburned 
brick and tiles, the Mission church and buildings were 
erected. The following description of San Luis Rey, con- 
densed from the account of an intelligent traveler who saw 
it in its palmy days, will convey a fair idea of the establish- 
ments of which it was a type. 

The Mission building is in the form of a hollow square of about 




Mission of San Jose. 

one hundred and fifty yards front, along which a gallery extends. 
The church forms one of the wings. The edifice, a single story 
in height, is elevated a few feet above the ground. In the interior 
is a court adorned with a fountain and planted with trees, on the 
corridor extending around which open the apartments of the friars 
and the major-domo as well as those used for work-shops, school- 
rooms, and storehouses, and the chambers set apart for the accom- 
modation of travelers and guests. 

The male and female infirmaries, as well as the schoolrooms, 
are placed in the most quiet portions of the premises. The young 
Indian girls occupy a set of apartments secluded from the rest 
and commonly called the " nunnery," and they themselves are fa- 
miliarly styled the " nuns." They are thus entirely protected from 
intrusion, and, being placed under the guardianship of staid and 
trustworthy matrons of their own race, are taught to spin and 



The Missions of Alta California 113 

weave wool, flax, and cotton, and do not leave the nunnery until 
marriageable. 

The Indian children attend the same schools with those of the 
white colonists, and are educated with them. Those who exhibit 
the most talent are taught some music, as the plain chant of the 
church, as well as the violin, flute, horn, violoncello, and other in- 
struments. Such as attain superior proficiency, either as carpen- 
ters, smiths, or even agricultural laborers, are made foremen, by 
the name of alcaldes, and placed in charge of the other workmen. 

Two ecclesiastics are stationed at each Mission ; the elder is 
charged with the internal administration and the duty of religious 
instruction, the younger, with the direction of the agricultural and 
mechanical labor. The Franciscans assiduously cultivate the study 
of the Indian dialects, of which they have compiled dictionaries and 
grammars, some of which are still extant. 

Industry is inculcated and encouraged by the constant exam- 
ple of the Fathers, who are always the first to put their hands 
to the work; and considering the meagerness of their resources, 
and the absence of European labor, the works they have executed 
with the aid of unskilled savages, of low intelligence, are marvels 
of architecture and mechanical skill. These comprise mills, ma- 
chinery, bridges, roads, and canals for irrigation, besides extensive 
agricultural labors. For the erection of nearly all the Mission 
buildings large beams had to be transported from the mountains 
eight and ten leagues off, and the Indians taught to burn lime, cut 
stone, make bricks, tiles, etc. 

Opposite the Mission building is usually a guard-house for lodg- 
ing the escort of the priests, consisting of four cavalry soldiers, 
under command of a sergeant, who act as couriers, carrying corre- 
spondence and orders from one Mission to another, besides pro- 
tecting the Mission from the incursions of hostile Indians. 

The following is a summary of the ordinary day's work at 
a Mission. At sunrise the bell sounded for the Angelus 
and the Indians assembled in the chapel, where they attended 
morning prayers and mass and received a short religious 
instruction. Then came breakfast, after which, distributed 

8 



114 



A New Nation 



in squads as occasion required, they repaired to their work. 
At II A. M. they ate dinner, and after that rested until 2 
p. M. Work was then resumed, and continued until an 
hour before sunset, wdien the bell again tolled for the An- 
gelus. After prayers and the rosary the Indians supped, and 
then were free to take part in a dance or some such innocent 
amusement. Their diet consisted of fresh beef or mutton 
in abundance, with vegetables and tortillas made of flour or 
corn-meal. They made drinks of the same ingredients, 
which were called atole and pinole respectively. Their dress 
consisted of a shirt of linen, a pair of pantaloons, and a 
woolen smock. The alcaldes and head workmen had also 
cloth clothes like those of the Spaniards; the women re- 




The first mission in California (San Diego). 



The Missions of Alta California 115 



ceived every year two changes of under-clothing, a smock, 
and a new gown. 

The Indians of Cahfornia were not the sturdy warlike 
race of the eastern side of the continent, nor did they 
possess the intelligence or partial civilization of the natives 
of the tableland of Mexico. They were originally of low in- 
telligence and brutish habits. Besides what they obtained 
from fishing and hunting — in which they do not appear 
to have been specially dexterous — their food consisted 
largely of acorns, pine nuts, and the like, and their cloth- 
ing was practically nil. Though neither as subtle nor as 
fierce as the Iroquois, Algonquins, and Hurons of Can- 
ada, with whom Parkman's brilliant pages have made us 
familiar, they were not wanting in cunning, treachery, or 
ferocity, and on more than one occasion the missionaries 
sealed their faith with their blood — a sacrifice from 
which, to their honor be it said, the Franciscans never 
flinched, any more than the followers of Ignatius. 

As conversions r" 
m a d e progress 
among the na- 
tives, and the 
young people, in- 
structed fro m 
their childhood, 
came to maturity, they were taught various industries, be- 
sides farming. Ordinary smith's and carpenter's work they 
learned to do fairly well; their saddlery was of a superior 
sort, and is still sought for. As weavers, tailors, and shoe- 
makers they would not perhaps have obtained recognition 
in Paris, London, or New York, but they made service- 
able blankets, scrapes, cloth, and shoes, and I have seen 




San Gabriel, near Los Angeles. 



ii6 



A New Nation 




Mission of San Miguel, San Luis Obispo County. 



creditable specimens of their work in silver. Domestic 
animals were introduced and they increased with aston- 
ishing rapidity, and in the care and management of them 
the Indians became very dexterous and serviceable — in 
fact, some of the most skilful horsemen in the world. 

Hides, tallow, grain, wine, and oil were sold to ships 
visiting the coast. From the proceeds the friars dis- 
tributed to the Indians handkerchiefs, clothing, tobacco, 
rosaries, trinkets, etc., and employed the surplus profits in 
the embellishment of the churches, the purchase of musical 
instruments, pictures, ornaments for the altar, etc. Where 
lands were found suitable for the purpose the fathers es- 
tablished outlying farms as appurtenances of the particular 
Mission on which they were made to depend. At these 
were gathered considerable colonies of civilized Indians 
selected from the most reliable. 

Besides instructing the natives and incidentally fulfilling 
the duties of parochial clergy, the Missions extended a boun- 
tiful hospitality to all travelers and wayfarers. Planted at 
intervals of about a day's journey, on the natural route of 
travel along the coast, they became the usual resting-place 



The Missions of Alta California 117 



for all travelers in either direction. Horses were the only 
means of locomotion, and at the end of his hard day's 
ride the weary traveler stopped at the door of the Mission 
building as naturally, and with as little thought of intru- 
sion, as one might now at a public hotel. Throwing his 
rein to an Indian arricro, he was received by the missionary 
priest, or in his absence by the sacristan, with the patri- 
archal hospitality that Abraham extended to Lot. A bath 
was provided, followed by a plentiful meal and a com- 
fortable bed. He was at liberty to stay as long as his con- 
venience required, and on leaving was provided with a 
fresh horse and directions, or, if 
needed, a guide, for his further jour- 
ney. Perhaps it is a tradition from 
these early days, but travelers still 
speak kindly of the hospitality of Cali- 
fornia. 

The Missions in this State were in 
all twenty-one. They may be said to 
have attained their maximum of pros- 
perity during the first quarter of the 
present century. 

But the increase of white settlers, 
bringing with them the wants, ambi- 
tions, and freedom of modern life, was 
incompatible with the continued suc- 
cess of institutions based, as the Mis- 
sions were, on paternal authority. 
The Indians were infants in all respects 
except age and capacity for evil ; and 

the settlers were subject to no re- I" ^he garden of the 
•' _ _ _ Santa Barbara Mis- 

straints except those of civil authority, sion, California. 




ii8 



A New Nation 




Cloisters and bell, San Fernando. 



which was of the weakest 
kind. Contact and inter- 
course with them corrupted 
the Indians and relaxed the 
bonds of discipHne among 
them. Moreover the broad 
acres and the vast herds of 
the Missions excited the cu- 
pidity of the settlers, who 
did not regard the property 
of the friars and Indians in 
the same light as that of 
white people. Under these 
influences the ^^lexican con- 
gress, in 1833. passed a law for secularizing the ^lis- 
sions, converting them into parishes, replacing the mis- 
sionary priests by curates, and emancipating the Indians 
from their pupilage to the Church. Administrators were 
to be appointed for the temporalities of the ^Missions, the 
proceeds of which, after a small allowance for the main- 
tenance of the priest and the charges of public worship, 
were to be applied to public purposes. 

The ruin of the Missions was completed by the American 
conquest. The few remaining Indians were speedily 
driven or enticed away, for the rough frontiersmen who 
came over the plains knew nothing of missionary friars or 
civilized Indians ; they came here to scjuat on public land 
and respected no possession beyond 160 acres, and that only 
in the hands of one familiar with the English language 
and modern weapons. None of the establishments retains 
its original character. \\'here population has grown up 
around the site, as at Santa Clara, San Francisco, and San 



The Missions of Alta California 119 

Rafael, they became parish churches. At other places 
squatters took possession of them, extruding priests and 
major-domo impartially, and in more than one case even 
the churches were sacrilegiously degraded to the use of 
stables and the like. In others many parts of the build- 
ings were demolished for the sake of the timber, tiles, and 
other building material they afforded. 

The most extensive of the old establishments was that 
of San Luis Rey. I visited it with a companion in the 
summer of 1862. 

The interior court, once a garden, bright with flowers and 
the lustrous leaves of the orange and lemon tree, was rank 
with weeds and spontaneous vegetation; the fountain was 



f^S^: 



lit 







J^^^ 

' -:!?■' 



The Mission of San Luis Rey, San Diego County. 



dried up, and the walls which confined its basin split by the 
swelling roots of neglected and overgrown trees. Great 
spider webs hung from the columns of the corridor, and 
the stillness was broken only by the drowsy hum of dragon- 
flies and humming-birds. I entered the venerable old 
church, and while endeavoring to accustom my eyes to the 
dim, uncertain light which shrouded its interior I was dis- 



120 



A New Nation 



turbed by the startled cry and hasty flight of an enormous 
owl, which left its perch over where the high altar had 
stood and rustled over to a window at the opposite end. 
The Mission gardens, particularly that in front of the 
main building, retained many traces of former beauty. 
But the hedgerows, once carefully trimmed, now grown 
rank and wild ; the old rustic seats crumbling to decay ; the 
vines and fruit trees, which for want of pruning had ceased 
to produce; and the garden flowers growing neglectedly 
— all told of decay and ruin. From the remains of the 
fountain two clear streams of water still issued, and from 
the little rivulet they formed, bordered with cress as green 
as an emerald, a lazy fish looked deliberately up at me 
without moving — so unaccustomed to man as not to fear 
him. Just before the American conquest this Mission had 
harbored an industrious Indian population of several thou- 
sand. It had been occupied by our troops as a military 
post during the Mexican War and for some time after its 
close. When it ceased to be so used the Government, as I 
have heard General Beale say, caused an estimate to be 
made of the expense of repairing and restoring it to its 
former condition. The figures were two millions of dol- 




Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara County. 



The Missions of Alta California 121 

lars, and the project of repairing was, of course, given 
over. 

It stands there to-day, magnificent, even in its ruins, a 
monument of the piety, devotion, industry, and disinter- 



M.Sta.Cli 

>JVI .d S.C'wlosI a.Monte Key 
oM.S. Louis 




Pta.a la Concep'if' 

Pta.d Pedernales 



. Pres'o.a Bart'a 

'°--, M.S. Buenaventura 



'^^^ S''^*2£^^«\. >. oM.S.GaL'l. ^ 





S.Pedroy S.Palj'o 
La Pur'ma Cou'oa 



Map of the Coast Line, Drawn in 1787. 



estedness of the venerahle monks v^ho wear the habit and 
cord of St. Francis, and who were the first colonists of 
Alta California. 



PIONEER SPANISH FAMILIES IN CALIFORNIA 
By Charles Howard Shinn 

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE VALLEJOS 

The most attractive literary material left in California 
is to be found in the recollections and traditions of de- 
scendants of the pioneer Spanish families. But these men 
and women must be met with sympathy for their misfor- 
tunes, and with an unfeigned interest in the old ranch and 
Mission days. As soon as their confidence is fairly won 
they tell all they know, with almost childlike eagerness to 
help in the restoration of the past.' One immediately ob- 
serves the great stress laid upon family connections, the 
pleasure taken in stories of former times, and the especial 
reverence for the founders of the province, the governors 
and other officials, and the heads of the Missions. Pol- 
itics, though of course on an extremely small scale, occu- 
pies a large part of the recollections of the older men, and 
the animosities of the petty revolutions of half a century 
ago, of the years just before the American conquest, and 
of the conquest itself, still divide families from each other. 

It is remarkable how many of the daughters of the best 
families of the old California towns married Americans 
and Englishmen of standing. In the Carrillo family four 
daughters married foreigners ; the Ortegas, Noriegas, and 
many others showed a similar record. The grace, beauty, 
and modesty of the women of the time were the admira- 

122 



Pioneer Spanish Families 



123 



tion of every visitor. The freedom from care, the out- 
door life and the constant exercise, and the perfect climate 
of California had re-created the Andaliisian type of loveli- 
ness. In the Ortega family, for instance, the women,, who 
all had brown hair and eyes and were of pure Castilian 
stock, were so renowned for their beauty that their fame 
extended to the city of Mexico, and General Ramirez came 
from there with letters of introduction to win a daughter 
of the Ortegas. 

A multitude of stories of the social life of the Spanish 
period might be told here, but it is sufficient to give the 
outline as told by the descendants of those old families. 
Each town on the coast was the center of the hide and tal- 
low trade for a hundred miles or more. The low adobe 
stores there held piles of costly and beautiful goods in the 
days of which Farnham and Dana wrote — the days when 
the great cattle princes came from their ranches to hold 
festival. The young ■^'^'"^ , 

cavaliers rode in on 
fiery but well-trained 
and gaily capari- 
soned horses, and all 
the wonderful feats 
of horsemanship of 
as fine a race of ri- 
ders as the world has 
ever seen were per- 
formed daily on 
mesa and sea-beach 
and plaza. But the 
home life of these 



-f~of 




great families was 



Early Spanish Don, in Old Spanish riding 
dress. 



124 A New Nation 

simplicity itself. In many a Spanish house there was no 
fireplace, window, or chimney. The fire for cooking was 
built on a clay floor, partly roofed, outside of the main 
building. The household utensils were few — a copper 
or iron kettle, a slab of rock on which to pound corn or 
wheat, a soapstone griddle for the tortillas. Dishes, table- 
ware, and furniture came slowly, and were of the most 
simple description. For years a raw hide stretched on the 
floor with a blanket spread over it formed the usual bed 
in early California. Everything was kept exquisitely clean, 
and though the Spanish families learned to spend more on 
their houses and belongings, they seemed to look upon such 
things as only affording opportunities for a more generous 
hospitality. 

In the old days there was not a hotel in California, and 
it was considered a grievous offense even for a stranger, 
much more for a friend, to pass by a ranch without stop- 
ping. Fresh horses were always furnished, and in many 
cases on record when strangers appeared to need financial 
help a pile of uncounted silver was left in the sleeping apart- 
ment, and they were given to understand that they were to 
take all they needed. This money was covered with a 
cloth, and it was a point of honor not to count it before- 
hand nor afterwards. It was "guest silver," and the cus- 
tom continued until its abuse by travelers compelled the 
native Calif ornians to abandon it. Among themselves no 
one was ever allowed to suffer or struggle for lack of help. 
The late Dr. Nicholas Den, of Santa Barbara, who mar- 
ried into the Ortega family, once needed money to carry 
through a speculation, and thought of going to Los Angeles 
to borrow it. Old Father Narciso, hearing of the matter, 
sent his Indian boy to him with a " cora," or four-gallon 



Pioneer Spanish Families 



125 




The Camulos Ranch, — the scene of H. H.'s " Ramona." 



tule basket, full of gold, and the message that he ought to 
come to his priest whenever he needed help. 

The collections of " Documents relating to the History 
of California " made by General Vallejo and his brother 
Don J. J. Vallejo, and now in the Bancroft library, and 
the very graphic and careful series of manuscript notes 
and memoranda by General Vallejo, entitled " Historia de 
California," all cast light upon the social and economic 
conditions in these Arcadian days. A very large number 
of the old families, such as the Castros, Picos, Arces, and 
Peraltas, and many of the Americans who had married 
native Californians, furnished manuscripts, letters, and 
various documents of permanent value. In fact it may be 
doubted if the pioneer period of any other American State 
has had a more complete mass of original authoritative 
data made ready for the historian's use. Much still re- 
mains to be collected from first hands, and many minor 
historical questions will probably be solved by documents 



126 



A New Nation 




An early mansion. 

still held by the nati\e Californian families, who treasure 
every scrap of written paper. 

The link between the old and the new, between the quiet 
and happy pastoral age of the beginning of the nineteenth 
century and the age of American growth and change that 
followed fast on the conquest, was that remarkable man. 
General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, whose children, as he 
once told me, " were born under three administrations — 
Spanish, Mexican, and American." At the age of sixteen 
he was an ofificer in the army and the private secretary of 
the governor of California. In 1829, when only twenty- 
one, he became lieutenant-commander of the northern de- 
partment, which included all the country north of Santa 
Cruz, and made his headquarters at the presidio. Here he 
organized the first town go\'ernment of Yerba Buena. and 
for five years exercised both civil and military functions 
there. The Solis rebellion against Governor Echeandia, 
who had removed the seat of government from Monterey 
to San Diego, began in the fall of 1829, and Vallejo aided 
in the defeat of the insurgents at Santa Barbara. He was 



Pioneer Spanish Families 



127 



a member of the territorial deputation in 1831, and 
brought articles of impeachment against Governor Victoria, 
who was defeated and driven from California in the revo- 
lution which followed. The next year General Vallejo 
married Sefiorita Francisca Benicia Carrillo, by whom he 
had seventeen children, nine of whom are now living. 

By 1840 the young lieutenant had reached the rank of 
lieutenant-general, and was the one man in California to 
whom the entire province turned with perfect confidence 
in every emergency. When Gutierrez was deposed Val- 
lejo took control of affairs, and he made his nephew Al- 
varado civil governor, retaining military control himself. 
Vallejo then founded the town of Sonoma, making it his 
military headquarters, and spent more than a quarter of a 




Washing day on a ranch. 



128 



A New Nation 



million dollars there. He sent to Mexico for a printing 
press and type, set up with his own hands his orders and 
proclamations, and printed and bound several pamphlets. 
This was in 1839. The famous Zamorano press of Mon- 
terey, which began work in November, 1834, with carnival 
ball invitations, had printed the " Catecismo " and many 
public documents, which are much prized by collectors. 
Paper was so scarce that the proof-sheets and defective 
prints were saved and used for fly-leaves of the curious 
little arisincticas and other text-books that were issued a 
few years later for the schools of the province. 

One has to go back to the days of the famous Spanish 
" marches," or frontier towns built and defended in Spain's 
heroic age by her proudest knights, to find a fit parallel in 
history to the position held by General Vallejo during the 
closing years of the Mexican rule in California. He had 
absolute sway for a hundred miles or more, and he " kept 
the border." His men rode on horseback to Monterey and 
to Captain Sutter's fort on the Sacramento, bringing him 




An adobe in Sonoma. 



Pioneer Spanish Families 



129 



news and carrying his letters. Spanish families colonized 
the fertile valleys under his protection, and Indians came 
and built in the shadows of the Sonoma Mission. He 




Chariot, early in Nineteenth Century. 

owned, as he believed by unassailable title, the largest and 
finest ranch in the province, and he dispensed a hospitality 
so generous and universal that it was adniired and extolled 
even among the old Spanish families. J. Quinn Thorn- 
ton, who visited the coast in 1848 and published his ex- 
periences, says: "Governor-General Vallejo owns 1,000 
horses that are broken to the saddle and bridle, and 9,000 
'that are not broken. Broken horses readily bring one 
hundred dollars apiece, but the unbroken ones can be pur- 
chased for a trivial sum." More and more in the closing 
years of the epoch and the days of the conquest General 
Vallejo became the representative man of his people, and 
so he has received, among many of the old families, the 
reproachful name of a traitor to California and to his na- 
tion. The quiet intensity of this bitterness, even to-day, is 
a startling thing. I have seen men of pure blood, famous 
in provincial history, leave the room at the name of Val- 
lejo. 



OSCEOLA 



By Major-general O. O. Howard 




I suspect " Uncle Sam " was born 
July 4th, 1776. If so, he was still a 
young man, only twenty-eight years 
old, when Osceola came into the 
world. The Red Stick tribe of the 
Creek Indians had a camp on the 
bank of the Chattahoochee. The 
water of this river is colored by the 
roots of trees, shrubs, and vines 
which grow along its sluggish cur- 
rent, and SO' it is very black. Osce- 
ola's mother, living near this dark river, named her 
baby As-sa-he-ola — black water. Spanish tongues 
by and by shortened it to the beautiful and Latinlike 
name of Osceola. Osceola's mother was the daughter of a 
Creek Indian chieftain. His father is said to have been an 
Indian trader born in England. There were three children, 
two girls and the boy. Osceola's mother, the proud and 
high-tempered Indian princess, became angry for some rea- 
son and taking her son went into the wilderness of southern 
Georgia and joined her own people, while the father took 
his two daughters and passed over to the Far West. The 
princess taught Osceola both English and her own language, 
but she had come to hate the white people and did not fail 
to bring up her son with the same unkind feelings. 

130 






Osceola 131 

After a time troubles arose between our white settlers 
and the Creek Indians in Georgia, and Uncle Sam sent Gen- 
eral Jackson with an army to drive the Indians further 
south. 

At this time Osceola was only fourteen years old; yet he 
was so smart and so fierce that he became a leader of his 
people. Under him they fought hard, and were driven at 
last to the middle of Florida, where, not far from one of 
Uncle Sam's stockades, called Fort King, the tribe joined 
the Seminole Indians, who lived there. These Florida 
Indians, the Seminoles, w^ere really a part of the Creek 
nation and spoke almost the same language. They soon 
became fond of Osceola, and as their head chief, Micanopy, 
was very old, in all fighting Osceola became the real leader. 
He had two underchiefs, one named Jumper and the other 
Alligator. They were as fierce and hated the white people 
as much as he did, and enjoyed doing all he told them to 
do. As Osceola grew older he had a fine, manly bearing 
and a deep, soft, musical voice. He quickly learned a new 
language, and was very skilful in the use of the bow, though 
he liked better the white man's rifle with powder and ball. 
It is said he always hit what he aimed at. 

For fifteen years Osceola went from tribe to tribe and 
from chief to chief all over Florida and other States of the 
South, wherever he could find Indians. He always spoke 
against the white people, saying they were two-faced and 
would not treat the Indians with justice and mercy. I be- 
lieve that Uncle Sam really had a good feeling for his red 
children; but the white people were very few in Florida, 
and they were afraid of the Indians and wanted to send 
them away to the West. So they asked Uncle Sam to send 
his officers and agents to make a bargain with the redmen. 



132 A New Nation 

This bargain came about and was called the " Treaty of 
Payne's Landing." It was signed at Payne's Landing on 
the Ocklawaha River, May 9, 1832, by some of the Indian 
chiefs and by Uncle Sam's white officers and agents. It 
was agreed that all the Indians were to go far away beyond 
the Mississippi River before the end of the year, and that 
Uncle Sam should give them $3,(X)0 each year and other 
things which were written in the treaty. Only a few of 
the Indians really agreed to go, and Osceola, now twenty- 
eight years old, was very much against giving away the 
Seminole country. He aroused the whole nation, nine- 
tenths of the head men were with him, and he gathered 
good warriors, divided them into companies and drilled 
them. Osceola called an Indian assembly, and rising to his 
full height took a strong bow in his right hand and an ar- 
row in his left, and said, " I will not sign a treaty to give 
away the Indians' land, and I will kill the chiefs or any fol- 
lowers who sign it." 

Two years passed, and then some Seminole chieftains, 
who had gone beyond the Mississippi, returned. They re- 
ported against the removal of the Indians, and the Indian 
Agent called a meeting of well-known Indians and white 
men to talk it over. The old chief, Micanopy, spoke for 
the Indians, but Osceola sat near and whispered into his 
ear what to answer the Indian Agent. Micanopy was old 
and wanted peace. He, Jumper, Alligator, and others said 
they never meant to sign away their land, but only agreed 
to send some men to look over the new country before they 
decided what to do. The meeting became very excited, and 
at last Osceola sprang to his feet and defied the agent, say- 
ing in a taunting manner, " Neither I nor my warriors 
care if we never receive another dollar from the Great 



Osceola 



133 



Father." The agent, spreading the treaty upon the table, 
remonstrated with Osceola, but the fierce chief drew his 
long knife from its sheath and cried: " The only treaty I 




Osceola. 



will execute is with this," and he drove the knife through 
and through the paper into the table. 

Soon after this Osceola had an interview with Captain 
Ming of the Coast Survey near Fort King, but he declined 



134 ^ ISltw Nation 

every civility and said, " I will not break bread with a 
white man." A formal council was arranged, but here 
Osceola in a threatening manner seized a surveyor's chain 
and declared in a loud voice, "If you cross my land I will 
break this chain into as many pieces as there are links in it, 
and then throw the pieces so far you can never get them 
together again." The Indian Agent, in desperation, sent 
for Osceola and ordered him to sign the papers for trans- 
porting the Indians, but he answered, " I will not." When 
told that General Jackson, the President, would soon teach 
him better, Osceola replied, " I care no more for Jackson 
than for you." 

The Indian Agent knowing that Osceola stirred up his 
people, had him put in prison at the fort, but he escaped by 
making promises to his guards. As soon as he was free 
again he began to get his warriors ready for battle. He 
went from place to place very fast, hardly stopping for 
food, till he had a large number of braves gathered near 
Fort King. Their knives were kept sharp, but sheathed, 
and rifles were kept on hand with enough powder and balls. 
Five Indians who went to get food were caught and publicly 
whipped. Soon after, an Indian was killed ; then three 
white men were wounded and a white mail-carrier killed. 
The chief, Emaltha, who was friendly to the treaty, was 
assassinated. The war had begun. 

It was now 1836 and Osceola was thirty years old. 
Hearing that Major Dade, with no officers and men, was 
to pass along the military road from Fort Brooke at Tampa 
Bay, Osceola send Micanopy and Jumper with 800 of his 
warriors to wait in ambush for them. It was so well ar- 
ranged that the whole command except three men were 
killed. These three men escaped to Tampa and told the 



Osceola 135 

terrible story. Osceola had himself remained with a small 
force near Fort King, for he wished to kill the Indian Agent, 
his long-time enemy. Lieutenant Smith and the agent were 
walking quietly toward the sutler's shop, a half mile from 
the stockade, when a number of Indians set upon them and 
both were killed. The agent was pierced by fourteen bul- 
lets and the lieutenant by five. The sutler and four others 
were killed, and the store and outbuildings burned. The 
fire gave the first alarm at the fort. In the meantime, 
Osceola's warriors under Micanopy and Jumper had been 
so prompt that the first battle was over before their leader 
joined them. Then the dreadful war went on. Osceola 
met General Clinch with 1,000 regular soldiers at the cross- 
ing of the Withlacoochee River. There were not a thou- 
sand Indians, but Osceola brought them into battle like an 
experienced general. His men followed his own brave 
example and fought with tiger-like ferocity. Osceola is 
said to have slain forty of our officers and men with his 
own hand. The Indians fought till their ammunition was 
gone, and then with bows and arrows and knives. 

After this, Osceola went through many battles, but he 
. never despaired and never surrendered till the fearful battle 
came when the Indians were defeated by General Taylor. 
Then the waters ran with the blood of Uncle Sam's quarrel- 
ing children and Osceola's men were scattered to the four 
winds. Even then Osceola would not have been captured 
but for an act of treachery. He was asked to come to a 
conference at a camp not far from St. Augustine. He 
came with some of his warriors, trusting to the word of 
the commander, but he and his companions were at once 
surrounded and carried to St. Augustine as prisoners of 
war. Our officers said it was right to do this because 




He drove his knife through and through the paper. 



Osceola 137 

Osceola had not kept his promises in peace or war, but we 
do not like to think that the officers and agents of Uncle 
Sam broke their word, even if an Indian chief did not keep 
his. Though Osceola fought in the Indian way, and hated 
the treatment that the white people gave the Indians, still, 
we know he did not hate the white women and children, 
and constantly told his warriors to treat women and 
children with kindness. 

After he was taken to St. Augustine he was in a sad con- 
dition. His spirit was broken by defeat and imprisonment, 
and he grew feeble as he realized there was no escape. 
When he was taken to Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor 
he knew that he should never see his own land again. 
Then he refused food, would see no visitors, and died, 
broken-hearted, after a short illness, aged thirty-three. He 
was a brave enemy, and respected as he had been by the 
Indian nation, his manly nature was too proud to be long 
under the control of the white man. 



THE EARLY LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER 
By John Bach McMaster 

Webster's father 

Ebenezer Webster selected Stevenstown as his future 
home, took up land, and built a log cabin, to which, a year 
later, he brought a wife. The town was then on the very 
edge of the frontier, and as his cabin was farther north than 
any other, not a habitation save those of the red man lay 
between him and Canada. In this wilderness home five 
children were born before the mother died, after ten years 
of wedded life, and the father brought to it as his second 
wife Abigail Eastman. 

Wringing a livelihood from such a soil in such a climate 
was hard enough at any time, but the task was now made 
more difficult still by the opening of the long struggle be- 
tween the colonies and the mother-country, and the constant 
demand on his time for services, both civil and military. 
Now we see him, after the fights at Concord and Lexing- 
ton, hurrying at the head of his company to join the forces 
around Boston ; now home again to serve as delegate to the 
convention which framed the first constitution of New 
Hampshire. Now we see him, a true minuteman, resign- 
ing his captaincy and hastening to serve under Washington, 
in an hour of dire need at W'hite Plains; then home again 
to become a member of a committee to prevent forestalling 
and to regulate the prices of commodities. Now we be- 

138 



The Early Life of Daniel Webster 139 

hold him at the head of seventy men pushing through the 
wilderness for the relief of Ticonderoga; now returning 
when he hears of the evacuation of the fort, and reaching 
home just in time to lead back another band that fought 
gallantly at Bennington. Once again at home we find him 
at the head of more committees to regulate prices, to enlist 
the town's quota for the Continental army, and finally in 
command of four companies raised to aid in the defense of 
West Point. Public services of such various sorts bespeak 
a man with a will not easily bent, with a capacity to do equal 
to any emergency, with a patriotism rising above all consid- 
erations of self; a man courageous, resourceful, self-reliant, 
and commanding the entire confidence and respect of his 
fellows. 

By the time Cornwallis surrendered and the fighting 
ended, three more children had been added to the little 
flock. The log cabin had now become too small, and a farm- 
house was built near by. It was the typical New England 
farm-house of the day — one story high, clapboarded, with 
the chimney in the center, the door in the middle of the south 
side, four rooms on the ground floor, and a lean-to in the 
rear for a kitchen; and in this house, on January 18, 1782, 
another son was born, and named Daniel. 

When the child was a year and more old the parents 
moved to the banks of the Merrimac, to Elms Farm, a 
place of some local interest, for on it, within a cabin whose 
site was plainly visible in Webster's day, had been per- 
petrated one of the many Indian massacres that make up so 
much of frontier history, and near this had stood one of the 
last of the forts built to protect the inhabitants of Salisbury 
and the neighboring towns against the savages. 



140 A New Nation 

THE BOY WEBSTER 

As the boy grew in years and stature his life was power- 
fully affected by the facts that he was the youngest son and 
ninth child in a family of ten ; that his health was far from 
good; that he showed tastes and mental traits that stood 
out in marked contrast with those of his brothers and sis- 
ters ; and that he was, from infancy, the pet of the family. 
Such daily work as a farmer's lad was then made to do was 
not for him. Yet he was expected to do something, and 
might have been seen barefooted, in frock and trousers, 
astride of the horse that dragged the plow between the rows 
of corn, or raking hay, or binding the wheat the reapers cut, 
or following the cows to pasture in the morning and home 
again at night, or tending logs in his father's sawmill. 
When such work was to be done it was his custom to take a 
book along, set the log, hoist the gates, and while the saw 
passed slowly through the tree-trunk, an operation which, 
in those days, consumed some twenty minutes, he would set- 
tle himself comfortably and read. 

He was taught to read, he tells us, by his mother and 
sister at so early an age that he never knew the time when 
he could not peruse the Bible with ease. With this humble 
beginning, his further education was intrusted to the village 
schoolmaster. 

Most parents were then content to send their boys and 
girls when school was kept in the house nearest to their 
homes. But the father of Daniel was determined to give 
his son the best education the land afforded, so he was 
made to follow the master from place to place. When 
school was held in the middle house, but a few miles off, he 
walked to and fro each day; when at the western end of 




The Early Life of Daniel Webster 141 

the district, Daniel was boarded 

out in some family near by. 

When no schooling was to be 

had the boy roamed the woods 

and fields with a rough old 

British sailor who taught him to 

row and to fish, and filled his 

head with stories of bloody 

fights and strange adventures on 

land and sea. 

In 1 79 1, when Daniel had 

, . . Daniel Webster, 

just turned nme, a new honor 

which deeply affected his later career came to his father. 
The many evidences of confidence and esteem a grateful 
community had bestowed on Ebenezer Webster in the dark 
days of the Revolution did not cease with the war. The 
leader in strife remained a leader in peace, was sent year 
after year first to one and then to the other branch of the 
Assembly, was a delegate to the convention which ratified 
the Federal Constitution, and finally, in 1791, was placed on 
the bench of the Court of Common Pleas for the county in 
which he resided. These courts were composed of a presid- 
ing judge, always an able lawyer, and two side justices, 
usually laymen of hard common sense and sterling integrity ; 
and it was to one of these side justiceships that Ebenezer 
Webster was appointed. The office was one of honor and 
dignity, and carried with it an annual salary of several 
hundred dollars, just enough to enable the father to go on 
with his long-meditated plan for the education of Daniel. 

Of his five sons, Ebenezer, David, and Joseph had grown 
to manhood, were settled in life, and long past the school 
age. To educate the two remaining, Ezekiel and Daniel, 



142 A New Nation 

was beyond his means. But if his longing to see at least one 
son rise above the humble calling of a farmer was to be 
gratified, it must be one of these, and to choose which cost 
the father a bitter struggle. He met it with the unfaltering 
courage which marked the man, made his decision, and one 
day in 1795 announced his determination. " On a hot day 
in July," said Webster, describing the scene many years 
later, '' it must have been in one of the last years of Wash- 
ington's administration, I was making hay with my father, 
just where I now see a remaining elm-tree. About the mid- 
dle of the forenoon the Hon. Abiel Foster, M. C. who lived 
in Canterbury, six miles off, called at the house and came 
into the field to see my father. 

When he was gone my father called me to him, and we 
sat down beneath the elm on a haycock. He said : ' My 
son, that is a worthy man ; he is a member of Con- 
gress; he goes to Philadelphia and gets six dollars a day, 
while I toil here. It is because he had an education 
which I never had. If I had had his education I should 
have been in Philadelphia in his place. I came near it as it 
was. But I missed it, and now I must work here.' ' My 
dear father,' said I, ' you shall not work ; brother and 
I will work for you, and we will wear our hands out, and 
you shall rest.' And I remember to have cried, and I cry 
now at the recollection. ' My child,' said he, 'it is of no 
importance to me. I now live but for my children. I 
could not give your elder brothers the advantages of knowl- 
edge, but I can do something for you. Exert yourself, im- 
prove your opportunities, learn, learn, and when I am gone 
you will not need to go through the hardships which I have 
undergone, and which have made me an old man before my 
time.' " 



The Early Life of Daniel Webster 143 

EDUCATION 

Almost a year passed, however, before the plan so long 
cherished was fairly started, and Daniel, dressed in a brand- 
new home-made suit and astride a side-saddle, rode with his 
father to Exeter to be entered at the famous academy 
founded by John Phillips. The principal then and forty 
years thereafter was Dr. Benjamin Abbot, one of the great- 
est teachers our country has yet produced. As the doctor 
was ill, the duty of examining the new pupil fell to Joseph 
S. Buckminster, then an usher at the academy, but destined 
to influence strongly the religious life of New England. It 
was the custom of the doctor, we are told, to conduct the 
examination of applicants with pompous ceremony, and that, 
imitating him, young Buckminster summoned Webster to 
his presence, put on his hat, and said, " Well, sir, what is 
your age ? " " Fourteen," was the reply. " Take this 
Bible, my lad, and read that chapter." The passage given 
him was St. Luke's dramatic description of the conspiring of 
Judas with the chief priests and scribes, of the Last Supper, 
of the betrayal by Judas, of the three denials of Peter, and 
of the scene in the house of the high priest. But young 
Webster was equal to the test, and read the whole passage to 
the end in a voice and with a fervor such as Master Buck- 
minster had never listened to before. " Young man," said 
he, " you are qualified to enter this institution," and no more 
questions were put by him. The voice and manner so 
famous in later life were even then strikingly manifest. 
But one other gift of nature still lay dormant — he could 
not declaim. Long after he had become the greatest orator 
of the day he said to a friend: " I could not speak before 
the school. Many a piece did I commit to memory and re- 



144 



A New Nation 



hearse in my room over and over again, but when the day 
came, and the schoohnaster called my name, and I saw all 
eyes turned upon my seat, I could not raise myself from it. 
When the occasion was over I went home and wept bitter 
tears of mortification." 




The Second Academy building,' Phillips Exeter Academy, 
as it stood when attended by Daniel Webster in 1706. 

In August, 1797, Webster became a freshman in Dart- 
mouth College, more through the influence of Trustee Wood 
than by merit. He had now reached a turning-point in his 
career. Save during the nine months spent at Phillips 
Exeter, he had never been so far from home, had never been 
so completely thrown on his own resources, nor brought in 
close contact with so many young men of his own age and 
generation. He was free to make of himself what he 
pleased, and acted accordingly following the path of 
least resistance. Greek and mathematics he disliked and 
shunned ; but he read widely in English literature and in 
history, acquired a familiarity with Latin and with Latin 
authors, never forgot anything once acquired, was always 



The Early Life of Daniel Webster 145 

able to display his knowledge to the best advantage, was in 
no sense a student or a scholar, but became the best-in- 
formed man in college, and impressed all who met him as 
a youth of uncommon parts, with promise of being a great 
man. " So much as I read," says he, " I made my own. 
When a half-hour, or one hour at most, had elapsed, I closed 
my book, and thought over what I had read. If there was 
anything peculiarly interesting or striking in the passage, 
I endeavored to recall it and lay it up in my memory, and 
commonly could effect my object. Then if, in debate or 
conversation afterward, any subject came up on which I 
had read something, I could talk very easily so far as I had 
read, and there I was very careful to stop." 

Webster's first fourth-of-july address 

When the people of Hanover were casting about for an 
orator to speak to them on the Fourth of July, 1800, they 
turned with one accord to young Webster. 

Judged by the side of his later efforts, the oration de- 
livered on that day was indeed a weak and school-boy pro- 
duction. Yet it is not beneath the vast mass of patriotic 
speeches to which our forefathers gladly listened, on fast- 
days and Thanksgiving days, on the 22d of every February 
and the 4th of every July, and it richly deserved the honor 
of publication. 

Love of country, devotion to the Union, the grandeur of 
the Constitution, and the blessings of a free government ad- 
ministered by the people, made his theme. No question of 
State rights troubled him. " In the adoption of our present 
systems of jurisprudence," said he, " we see the powers nec- 
essary for government voluntarily flowing from the people, 
their only origin, and directed to the public good, their only 



146 



A New Nation 



proper object." It was the people of these States " who 
engaged in the transaction which is undoubtedly the greatest 
approach toward human perfection the political world ever 
yet witnessed, and which, perhaps, will forever stand in the 
history of mankind without a parallel." 

This was rank federalism; but that the lad should be a 
Federalist was inevitable. He had been reared at the knee 
of a man who had fought and toiled and spent his sub- 
stance in the struggle for independence, who followed the 
leadership of Washington in peace with the same unfalter- 
ing loyalty that he had followed it in war, and had received 
from his father a political creed of no uncertain kind. 
Since coming to years of discretion nothing had occurred to 
weaken, but much to strengthen, the belief so inherited. 
He had seen a foreign power meddling in our domestic af- 
fairs, had read the letter in which Adet threatened the ven- 
geance of France if Mr. Jefferson were not elected, and had 
since beheld that insolent threat made good. He had seen 
our minister to the French republic rejected, the X. Y. Z. 
commissioners insulted, and the whole country roused to 

indignation and ring- 
ing with the cry: 
"■ Millions for de- 
fense, but not a cent 
for tribute." He had 
seen a provisional 
army raised and 
Washington put in 
command ; he had 
seen the young men 

Webster's House," Dartmouth i^oiicge, associate for defense, 
where Daniel Webster roomed when , , - , 

a student. 'iiid the old men once 







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The Early Life of Daniel Webster 147 




again mount the black 
cockade of the Revo- 
hition, as an open de- 
fiance to those who, 
to, their shame, wore 
the tricolor of France ; 
he had seen seaport 
after seaport arm and 
equip a vessel of war, 
and had beheld the 
little navy so created 
triumph over every 
foe and bring France at last to the light of reason. 
All these things, in his opinion, took place because a large 
part of his countrymen had been deaf to the advice of Wash- 
ington, had quit their own to stand on foreign ground, and 
had formed in America a party warmly devoted to France. 
" But why," he asked, " shall every quarrel on the other side 
of the Atlantic interest us in its issue? Why shall the rise 
or depression of every party there produce here a correspond- 



Daniel Webster's house in Portsmouth, 
N. H. 



ing vibration ? 



Was this continent designed as a mere satel- 



lite to the other? The natural superiority of America 
clearly indicates that it was designed to be inhabited by 
a nobler race of men, possessing a superior form of gov- 
ernment, superior patriotism, superior talents, and su- 
perior virtues. Let, then, the nations of the East muster 
their strength in destroying each other. Let them aspire to 
conquest and contend for dominion till their continent is 
deluged in blood. But let none, however elated by victory, 
however proud of triumph, ever presume to intrude on the 
neutral position assumed by our country." A little later 
these ideas found expression in the Monroe Doctrine. 



WEBSTER AS THE DEFENDER OF THE 
CONSTITUTION 

By John Bach McMaster 

The decision of Webster to remain in the Senate brought 
him to another turning-point in his poHtical career, and he 
went back to begin a new contest with Calhoun for the 
preservation of the Union. The first struggle arose over 
the tariff, and ended in nullification. The second began 
over slavery, and led to secession. Mr. Benton is author- 
ity for the statement that when Calhoun went back to his 
home in the spring of 1833, disappointed and downhearted 
at the slight support the South had given to the act of nul- 
lification, he told his friends that the South could never be 
united against the North on the question of the tariff, and 
that the basis of Southern union must henceforth be the 
questions that sprang from slavery. Certain it is that by 
1833 the work of the abolitionists and antislavery people 
began to tell. It was in 1831 that the first number of the 
Liberator appeared, and the State of Georgia offered five 
thousand dollars to any one who would kidnap Garrison 
and bring him to the State. It was in 1833 that the Amer- 
icafi Antislavery Society was founded, and the Telegraph, 
a nullification journal published at Washington, flatly 
charged the people of the North with a deliberate purpose 
to destroy slavery in the South. Twenty newspapers in 
twenty different parts of the North and the South at once 

148 



The Defender of the Constitution 149 

made answer, denied the charge, and accused Calhoun and 
the Nullifiers of again attempting to wreck the Union. 
" His object," said one, " is to fan the flame of discord and 
separate the South from the North. Mr. Calhoun has 
been defeated in his ambitious project of reaching the 
Presidency. He would now gladly ruin the fair fabric of 
the United States that he might become the chief of a 
Southern confederacy. The tarifif was to have been the 
pretext for separation. This having failed, a new cause is 
sought in the question of slavery, and such miserable fa- 
natics as Garrison and wretched publications as the Liber- 
ator are quoted as evidence of the feeling of the people of 
the North." 

The fate of slavery was now clearly a iiational issue, 
and in the Niblo's Garden speech Webster placed himself 
on record. 

Later in the session, Webster came again to the defense 
of the Constitution, and in a speech, famous in its day, in 
which he reviewed the political conduct of Calhoun since 
1833, Webster charged him with a steady design to break 
up the Union. " The honorable member from South Car- 
olina," said he, " habitually indulges in charges of usurpa- 
tion and oppression against the Government of his coun- 
try. He daily denounces its important measures in the 
language in which our Revolutionary fathers spoke of the 
oppression of the mother-country. ... A principal 
object in his late political movement, the gentleman him- 
self tells us, was to unite the entire South; and against 
whom or against what does he wish to unite the entire 
South? ... I am where I ever have been, and ever 
mean to be. Here, standing on the platform of the gen- 
eral Constitution, a platform broad enough and firm enough 



150 A New Nation 

to uphold every interest of the whole country, I shall still 
be found." Calhoun replied with a review of Webster's 
conduct since he entered the House in 181 3; Webster an- 
swered with a like review of the behavior of Calhoun : and 
the two went their ways, the one to head the movement 
which ended in secession and civil war, the other to rouse 
that spirit of nationality which put down secession and pre- 
served the Union of the States. 

The Whig convention had not dared to frame a party 
platform; but the Democrats furnished one in the sneer 
that Harrison would be more at home in a log cabin guz- 
zling hard cider than seated in the White House ruling a 
nation. Save the little red school-house, nothing was 
dearer to the heart of the people than the log cabin, and no 
insult more galling could possibly have been uttered. That 
humble abode, with its puncheon floor, its mud-smeared 
sides, its latch-string, its window, where well-greased pa- 
per did duty for glass, had ever been, and was still, the 
symbol of American hardihood, and instantly became the 
true Whig watchword. On vacant lots in every city and 
town, on ten thousand village greens, the cabin, with a 
coon's skin on the wall, with the latch-string hanging out in 
token of welcome, and with a barrel of hard cider close be- 
side the door, became the Whig headquarters. Mounted 
on wheels and occupied by speakers, it was dragged from 
village to village. Log-cabin raisings, log-cabin medals, 
log-cabin badges, magazines, almanacs, song-books, pic- 
tures, were everywhere to be seen ; and into this wild cam- 
paign of song and laughter Webster entered with unwonted 
zeal. Though nobody wanted him to be President, the 
whole country seemed possessed to hear him speak. Count- 
less Tippecanoe clubs elected him a member; innumerable 



The Defender of the Constitution 151 

" raisings " claimed his presence. New Hampshire ap- 
pealed to him as the State where he was born. The West 
clamored for him as the stanch friend of her interests. A 
score of towns wanted him as the orator for the Fourth of 
July. The candidate himself was 'not so eagerly sought. 

The election over and won, Harrison tendered the De- 
partment of State to Clay, and, when he refused, asked 
Webster to choose between the State Department and the 
Treasury. To this Webster replied : " The question of ac- 
cepting a seat in your cabinet, should it be tendered me, 
has naturally been the subject of my reflections and of 
consultations with friends. The result of these reflections 
and consultations has been that I should accept the ofiice of 
Secretary of State, should it be offered to me under cir- 
cumstances such as now exist." 

To this the President-elect answered : " I entirely ap- 
prove of your choice of the two tendered you " ; and on 
March 4, Webster, hax'ing resigned his seat in the Senate, 
became Secretary of State. 

Early in May the National Intelligencer announced that 
Daniel Webster had resigned the office of Secretary of 
State. For months past the newspapers had been assert- 
ing and then denying that he would surely leave the cab- 
inet ; but now, to the joy of the Locofocos and the Dem- 
ocrats, the report was true. 

Webster was now, for the first time in fifteen years, a 
private citizen. That he should ever again return to pub- 
lic life seemed far from likely. He had passed his six- 
tieth birthday, his private affairs were in disorder, and he 
was free to enjoy the delights of Marshfield, which was to 
him the dearest spot on earth. 

To Webster's plea that it was not important to the conn- 



152 A New Nation 

try that he should return to public life the Whigs of Massa- 
chusetts would not listen, and on March 4, 1845, he once 
more took his seat in the Senate, as the successor of Rufus 
Choate, who was a native of Essex, Massachusetts, and a 
student at Dartmouth College when Webster delivered his 
great speech in the Dartmouth College case. We are told 
that Mr. Choate was so powerfully affected by the argu- 
ment that he determined to study law, a profession in 
which, in time, he won a reputation as an advocate second 
to none. 

The influence of Webster over Choate, thus early ac- 
quired, was never lost ; and in their later political careers 
the two men were closely allied. When Webster left the 
Senate in 1841, Choate became his successor; when Choate 
resigned in 1844, Webster in turn succeeded him; and in 
1852 it was Choate who urged the nomination of Webster 
for the Presidency before the Whig National Convention 
at Baltimore. 

The annexation of Texas brought war with Mexico ; the 
victories of Taylor and Scott, Kearny and Stockton, 
brought a chance to secure more territory; fear that the 
new acquisition might be made slave soil called forth the 
Wilmot Proviso; and the great struggle for the rights of 
man was on once more. 

After the defeat of Clay in 1844, it did seem as if Web- 
ster's hour had really come, and that he was the only 
available leader the Whig party could offer for the Pres- 
idency in 1848. Clay, it is true, was never more idolized; 
but his enemies were many and active, his views on the ex- 
tension of slavery were opposed to the growing convic- 
tions of Northern Whigs, while even his warmest friends 
had grown very tired of following him always to defeat. 



The Defender of the Constitution 153 

A new man was wanted ; might not Webster be that man ? 
His behef that slavery was a State institution and could not 
be meddled with by Congress made him acceptable to 
Southern Whigs. His services, his abilities, his devotion 
to the Constitution and the Union, were the admiration of 
Northern Whigs. His opposition to expansion, to the ac- 
quisition of more slave soil, might well bring to his sup- 
port thousands of old-line Whigs who had been driven by 
the conduct of Clay into the ranks of the Liberty party. 
But the prospect, fair as it was, proved a delusion. Web- 
ster did not possess one of the attributes of a popular 
leader. The very greatness of his abilities raised him far 
above the mass of men, and put him out of touch with 
them. He inspired awe, but not affection. No mortal 
man ever thought of coupling his name with any epithet of 
popular endearment. Jackson was " Old Hickory," 
" Old Roman " ; Harrison was " Old Tip " ; Clay was 
" Harry of the West," " the Mill-boy of the Slashes " ; and 
Taylor " Old Rough-and-Ready " : but the senator from 
Massachusetts was " the Hon. Daniel Webster " to his dy- 
ing day. Even the cartoonist could find no other name for 
him than " Black Dan." It was to " Rough-and-Ready," 
therefore, and not to Daniel Webster, that the Whig 
masses turned in 1848, when they were done with Clay. 

In the Senate were now brought together, for the last 
time, Webster, Calhoun, and Clay, leaders of the old par- 
ties, and Jefferson Davis and Stephen A. Douglas, soon to 
head the wings of a hopelessly divided democracy. There, 
too, were Salmon P. Chase and William H. Seward, 
destined to become chiefs of a party yet unformed; Hanni- 
bal Hamlin, the first Vice-President under Lincoln; Sam- 
uel Houston, who led the Texans on the field of San Ja- 



154 ^ ^tw Nation 

cinto, and twice served as president of that republic; and 
Thomas Hart Benton, now about to close thirty years of 
continuous service in the Senate. 

To this distinguished body Clay returned fully deter- 
mined to take little part in its proceedings. He would 
support Whig measures, but would neither aid nor oppose 
the administration. He would be a calm looker-on, rarely 
speaking, and even then merely for the purpose of pouring 
oil on the troubled waters. But he had not been many 
days in Washington before he was convinced that the talk 
of disunion was serious, that the Union was really in dan- 
ger, that old associates were turning to him, and that he 
must again take his place as leader. During three weeks 
the House of Representatives wrangled and disputed over 
the choice of a Speaker, and this time was used by Clay to 
prepare a plan to serve as the basis of a compromise. By 
the middle of January, 1850, his work w-as ready, and one 
cold evening he called on Webster, and went over the 
scheme, and asked for aid. This was conditionally prom- 
ised, and a week later Clay unfolded his plan in a set of 
resolutions, and at the end of another week explained his 
purpose in a great speech delivered before a deeply inter- 
ested audience. A rumor that he would speak on a cer- 
tain day brought men and women from cities as far away 
as New York to swell the crowd that filled the Senate 
Chamber, choked every entrance, and stood in dense 
masses in the halls and passages. Fatigue and anxiety 
were telling on him. He could with difficulty climb the 
long flight of steps and make his way to his place on the 
floor. But the eager faces of the throng, the seriousness 
of the plea he was about to make, and the shouts of ap- 
plause that rose from floor and gallery when he stood up 



The Defender of the Constitution 155 



to speak, and were taken up with yet greater vigor by the 
crowd without, gave him new strength. So wild was the 
cheering of those beyond the chamber doors, and so long 
did it continue, that he could not be heard in the room, and 




Exterior and interior of Webster's 
law office at Marshfield, Mass. 



the president was forced to order 
the hallways to be cleared. 
Again Clay spoke during two \ 

days, and on the second showed such signs 
of physical distress that senators repeatedly in- 
terrupted him with offers to adjourn. But he would not 
yield, and went on till he had finished. 

Clay having spoken, it was certain that Calhoun would 
follow, and letter after letter now came to Webster im- 
ploring him to raise his voice for the preservation of the 
Union, and speak as he had never done before. 

Appeals of this sort were quite unnecessary, for Web- 



156 A New Nation 

ster was cautiously and deliberately deciding what was the 
wisest course to take. In a letter written as late as the 
middle of February he said : " I do not partake in any de- 
gree in those apprehensions which you say some of our 
friends entertain of the dissolution of the Union or the 
breaking up of the Government. There is no danger, be 
assured, and so assure our friends. I have, thus far, upon 
a good deal of reflection, thought it advisable for me to 
hold my peace. If a moment should come when it will 
be advisable that any temperate, national, and practical 
speech which I can make would be useful, I shall do the 
best I can. Let the North keep cool." Another week's 
reflection convinced him that a national speech must be 
made, and on the 226. of February he wrote the same 
friend : " As time goes on I will keep you advised by tele- 
graph, as well as I can, on what day I shall speak. As to 
what I shall say you can guess nearly as well as I can. I 
mean to make a Union speech, and discharge a clear con- 
science." His biographer assures us " there was but little 
preparation for it," and that " all that remains of such 
preparation is on two small scraps of paper." 

On the 4th of March, while Webster was still at work 
on his speech, Calhoun, then fast sinking into his grave, 
attended the Senate. He was far too feeble to bear the 
fatigue of speaking, so his argument was read, in the midst 
of profound silence, by Senator Mason of Virginia. The 
second of the great triumvirate having now been heard, it 
soon became noised abroad that Webster would reply on 
March 7, and on that day, accordingly, the floors, galleries, 
and ante-chambers of the Senate were so densely packed 
that it was with difficulty that the members reached their 
seats. Mr. Walker of Wisconsin had the floor to finish a 



The Defender of the Constitution 157 

speech begun the day before; but when he rose and had 
looked about him, he said : " Mr. President, this vast audi- 
ence has not come together to hear me, and there is but 
one man, in my opinion, who can assemble such an audi- 
ence. They expect to hear him, and I feel it my duty, 
therefore, as it is my pleasure, to give the floor to the sen- 
ator from Massachusetts." 

Webster then rose, and after thanking the senator from 
Wisconsin, and Mr. Seward, the senator from New York, 
for their courtesy in yielding the floor, began that speech 
which he named " The Constitution and the Union," but 
which his countrymen have ever since called by the day of 
the month on which it was delivered. 

Addresses of approbation now came to him from citizens 
of Boston, of Newburyport, and of Medford, from the in- 
habitants of towns on the Kennebec River in Maine, and 
from innumerable places all over the South, the West, and 
the Middle States, coupled with calls for printed copies of 
the speech. 

By the end of March " one hundred and twenty thou- 
sand have gone off," and as the demand showed no decline, 
" I suppose that by the first day of May two hundred thou- 
sand will have been distributed from Washington." 

No speech ever delivered in the Senate of the United 
States produced such an effect on the country. Compro- 
misers, conservative men, business men with Southern 
connections, those willing to see the Union saved by any 
means, rallied to his support, and loaded him with unstinted 
praise. But the antislavery men, the abolitionists, the 
Free-soilers, and many Northern Whigs attacked him bit- 
terly. " Every drop of blood in that man's veins has eyes 
that look downward," said Emerson, after reading the 



158 A New Nation 

speech. " Webster," said Sumner, " has placed himself in 
the dark list of apostates." In the opinion of hosts of his 
fellow-countrymen, he was indeed an apostate. He had 
changed his creed ; he had broken from his past ; he had 
deserted the cause of human liberty ; he had fallen from 
grace. When Whittier named him Ichabod, and mourned 
for him in verse as one dead, he did but express the feeling 
of half New England: 

Let not the land once prond of him 

Insult him now. 
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, 

Dishonored brow. 

But let its humbled sons, instead, 

From sea to lake, 
A long lament, as for the dead, 

In sadness make. 



Then, pay the reverence of the old days 

To his dead fame ; 
Walk backward, with averted gaze, 

And hide the shame ! 

The purpose of Webster was not to put slavery in nor 
shut it out of the new Territories, nor make every man 
in the North a slave-catcher, nor bid for Southern support 
in the coming election. He sought a final and lasting set- 
tlement of a question which threatened the permanence of 
the Union and the Constitution, and Clay's " comprehen- 
sive scheme of adjustment," he believed, would effect this 
settlement. 

It was long the popular belief that disappointed ambi- 



The Defender of the Constitution 159 

tion, chagrin over the loss of the Presidential nomination, 
was the cause of Webster's death; but that such was the 
case may well be doubted. He was now an old man, far 
on in his seventy-first year. His health had long been 
failing; his strong efforts in behalf of the compromise 
measures had impaired it still further; and his end was in- 
evitably near. That his great disappointment hastened the 
end is quite likely, for from the June day when the Balti- 
more convention adjourned he broke rapidly, and in the 
early morning of October 24, 1852, he died at Marshfield. 
Clay had preceded him by four months. 

The great triumvirate had now passed into history. Of 
these three men, Calhoun taught the most pernicious doc- 
trines ; Clay was the most popular leader ; Webster created 
the most enduring work. What John Marshall did on the 
Supreme Bench, Webster did in the forum. The decisions 
of the great judge were not read by the people. The 
speeches of Webster were everywhere read by the people, 
influenced them strongly, and inspired that great leader 
of the plain people, Abraham Lincoln. To Marshall, Web- 
ster, and Lincoln, more than to any other men, is due the 
belief now held by the great mass of our countrymen, not 
that the LTnited States are a league, but that the United 
States is a nation. 



OLD NEW YORK AND ITS BUILDINGS 
Richard Grant White 




Window in Wash 
ington Hotel, Num- 
ber I, Broadway. 



What were the houses and the streets 
of New York hke in 1830-1840? 
There are old prints enough to help out 
the recollection of a boy observer, who 
finds that after many years he can 
safely trust his observation and his 
memory. 

Many circumstances united to make 
that part of the town about the begin- 
ning of Broadway the chosen residence 
of persons of fortune and social distinc- 
tion. Three of these were of them- 
selves all-sufhcient : it was the oldest 
quarter; from the beginning it had been the place of res- 
idence of persons in authority; it was near the Battery, 
which very early in the history of New York became a de- 
lightful promenade. Considering the commercial character 
of the place, its rapid growth, and the 
great changes it underwent, the long 
period during which this quarter pre- 
served its distinction is remarkable. It 
was not until between 1835 and 1840, 
more than a century and a half after 
the neighborhood became " the court 
end of the town," that there was any 

160 




Door in old New 
York house. 



Old New York and Its Buildings 16 1 

noteworthy modification of its character. Before that 
time, of necessity, elegant people began to live in other 
quarters; but this did not affect the status of the neighbor- 
hood of the Battery and the Bowling Green. Park Place, 
St. John's Square (between Hudson, Beach, Laight, and 
Varick streets), Bleecker street, and even Washington 
Square, had, before or then, become centers of fashion; 
but there was a clinging to the Battery. Even after the 
uptown movement began, which was about this time, peo- 
ple who were already housed near the Battery, or who 
could afford to get houses there, lingered lovingly around 
it. And well they might do so; for, except upon old 
Brooklyn Heights (and even then that was only " in 




11 



Number 7, State Street. 



l62 



A New Nation 




St. John's, New York. 



Brooklyn " ), a place of city residence 
more delightful or more convenient 
could not be found. Within five or 
ten minutes' w^alk of Wall street and 
of South street (v^here the great mer- 
chants — real merchants, who traded 
in ships with Europe and China and 
the South — had their 
counting-houses), it 
was yet entirely re- 
moved from business ; 
and its surround- 
ings made mere 
-: living there a 
' pleasure. State 

p- street, which is 

the eastern boun- 
dary of the Bat- 
tery, was unsur- 
passed, if it were 
ever equaled, as 
a place of town 
residence ; for 
livins: there was 



living on a park with a grand water view. The prospect 
from the windows and balconies of the old State street 
houses across the green-sward and through the elms of the 
Battery included the bay, with its islands and the shores of 
New Jersey. In summer, the western breezes blew upon 
these windows straight from the water. The sight here on 
spring and summer and autumn evenings, when splendid 
sunsets — common then, but rare now, because of changes in 



Old New York and Its Buildings 163 



the surrounding country, which have affected the formation 
and the disposition of the clouds — made the firmament 
and the water blaze with gold and color, seemed sometimes 
in their gorgeousness almost to surpass imagination. It 
was matter of course that such a place should be chosen as 
the site of the homes of wealthy people. Of these houses, 
not a few are still standing. But how changed ! 

Close by the City Hall stands a building of architectural 
merit, — St. Paul's, one of the finest Wren churches now 
existing, if not the 

very finest. In all my t ^Jk^ ■^-1)' 

walks about London 
and through other cit- 
ies in England, I saw- 
not one at all equal to 
it. The spire is re- 
markable for its light- 
ness, its fine gradation, 
and its happy combina- 
tion of elements which 
are in themselves so 
little suited to spire 
treatment that the eye 
protests against them, 
even while it admires 
the triumph of the con- 
structor over his reluc- 
tant materials. The 
spire of St. John's 
Church, which stands 
on the eastern side of 
the square is little in- Doorway in Washington Square. 




164 



A New Nation 



ferior to it; but St. Paul's springs more lightly from its 
tower, and rises to its vanishing point with a gradual grace 
which St. John's does not attain. The Broadway end of St. 
Paul's is hardly less admirable. Its pediment and lofty 
Ionic columns are beautifully proportioned, and are worthy 
of far more attention than they receive, except from well- 
educated architects, who show little reserve in their admira- 
tion of this building and of its neighbor, the old City Hall. 
It is true also that in construction these churches, and other 
buildings in this country of that period, are much superior 
to those in England of the same date. This I say upon the 

advice of competent 
professional men; for 
I pretend to approach 
architecture only as a 
dilettante and on its 
esthetic side. 

The interior of the 
churches, of which St. 
Paul's and St. John's 
are the best existing 
types, were not w^ith- 
out a certain kind and 
degree of beauty. They 
were, indeed, not truly 
ecclesiastical in spirit. 
They lacked entirely the 
sublimity and the mys- 
tery which the archi- 
tecture strangely called 
Gothic expresses with 
Doorway of a house in Oliver Street. ^uch natural facility. 




Old New York and Its Buildings 165 

For them no soaring nave and dimly lighted clear-story. 
But they were better than most of the little sham Gothic 
tabernacles which succeeded them. They were genuine ; 
good of their kind ; well suited to their purpose. In them re- 




Old mantel, New York house. 

spectability and decorum were so happily expressed that they 
were raised with an embodied grace. If people must as- 
semble in large bodies to worship in pews, and take part in 
a ceremonial of which the most important part is the 
listening to a sermon, it is difficult to see how it could be 
more conveniently, comfortably, and appropriately done 
than in one of these old Wren parish churches. 



THE EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN 

By Helen Nicolay 

Abraham Lincoln's forefathers were pioneers — men who 
left their homes to open up the wilderness and make the 
way plain for others to follow them. For one hundred and 
seventy years, ever since the first American Lincoln came 
from England to Massachusetts in 1638, they had been 
moving slowly westward as new settlements were made in 
the forest. They faced solitude, privation, and all the 
dangers and hardships that beset men who take up their 
homes where only beasts and wild men have had homes 
before; but they continued to press steadily forward, 
though they lost fortune and sometimes even life itself in 
their westward progress. Back in Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey some of the Lincolns had been men of wealth and 
influence. In Kentucky, where the future President was 
born on February 12, 1809, his parents lived in deep pov- 
erty. Their home was a small log cabin of the rudest kind, 
and nothing seemed more unlikely than that their child, 
coming into the world in such humble surroundings, was 
destined to be the greatest man of his time. True to his 
race, he also was to be a pioneer — not indeed, like his 
ancestors, a leader into new woods and unexplored fields, 
but a pioneer of a nobler and grander sort, directing the 
thoughts of men ever toward the right, and leading the 
American people, through difficulties and dangers and a 
mighty war, to peace and freedom. 

166 



The Early Life of Lincoln 167 

The story of this wonderful man begins and ends with a 
tragedy, for his grandfather, also named Abraham, was 
killed by a shot from an Indian's rifle while peaceably at 
work with his three sons on the edge of their frontier clear- 
ing. Eighty-one years later the President himself met 
death by an assassin's bullet. The murderer of one was 
a savage of the forest; the murderer of the other that far 
more cruel thing, a savage of civilization. 

When the Indian's shot laid the pioneer farmer low, his 
second son, Josiah, ran to a neighboring fort for help, and 
Mordecai, the eldest, hurried to the cabin for his rifle. 
Thomas, a child of six years, was left alone beside the dead 
body of his father; and as Mordecai snatched the gun from 
its resting-place over the door of the cabin, he saw, to his 
horror, an Indian, in his war-paint, just stooping to seize 
the child. Taking quick aim at a medal on the breast of 
the savage, he fired, and the Indian fell dead. The little 
boy, thus released, ran to the house, where Mordecai, firing 
through the loopholes, kept the Indians at bay until help ar- 
rived from the fort. 

It was this child Thomas who grew up to be the father 
of President Abraham Lincoln. After the murder of his 
father the fortunes of the little family grew rapidly worse, 
and doubtless because of poverty, as well as by reason of the 
marriage of his older brothers and sisters, their home was 
broken up, and Thomas found himself long before he was 
grown, a wandering laboring boy. He lived for a time 
with an uncle as his hired servant, and later he learned the 
trade of carpenter. He grew to manhood entirely without 
education, and when he was twenty-eight years old could 
neither read nor write. At that time he married Nancy 
Hanks, a good-looking young woman of twenty-three, as 



i68 



A New Nation 



poor as himself, but so much better off as to learning that 
she was able to teach her husband to sign his own name. 
Neither of them had any money, but living cost little on the 
frontier in those days, and they felt that his trade would 
suffice to earn all that they should need. Thomas took his 
bride to a tiny house in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where 
they lived for about a year, and where a daughter was born 
to them. 

Then they moved to a small farm thirteen miles from 
Elizabethtown, which they bought on credit, the country 
being yet so new that there were places to be had for mere 
promises to pay. Farms obtained on such terms were 
usually of very poor quality, and this one of Thomas Lin- 
coln's was no exception to the rule. A cabin ready to be 
occupied stood on it, however ; and not far away, hidden in 
a pretty clump of trees and bushes, was a fine spring of 
water, because of which the .place was known as Rock 




View of Thomas Lincoln's farm, 
where Abraham Lincohi was 
born. 



The Early Life of Lincoln 169 

Spring Farm. In the cabin on this farm the future Presi- 
dent of the United States was born on February 12, 1809, 
and here the first four years of his life were spent. Then 
the Lincohis moved to a much bigger and better farm on 
Knob Creek, six miles from Hodgensville, which Thomas 
Lincoln bought, again on credit, selling the larger part of it 
soon afterward to another purchaser. Here they remained 
until Abraham was seven years old. 

About this early part of his childhood almost nothing is 
known. He never talked of these days, even to his most 
intimate friends. To the pioneer child a farm offered much 
that a town lot could not give him — space ; woods to roam 
in; Knob Creek with its running water and its deep, quiet 
pool for a playfellow; berries to be hunted for in summer 
and nuts in autumn; while all the year round birds and 
small animals pattered across his path to people the solitude 
in place of human companions. The boy had few com- 
rades. He wandered about playing his lonesome little 
games, and when these were finished returned to the small 
and cheerless cabin. Once, when asked what he remembered 
about the War of 1812 with Great Britain, he replied: 
" Only this : I had been fishing one day and had caught a 
little fish, which I was taking home. I met a soldier in the 
road, and having always been told at home that we must be 
good to soldiers, I gave him my fish." It is only a glimpse 
into his life, but it shows the solitary, generous child and the 
patriotic household. 

It was while living on this farm that Abraham and his 
sister Sarah first began going to A-B-C schools. Their 
earliest teacher was Zachariah Riney, who taught near the 
Lincoln cabin ; the next was Caleb Hazel, four miles away. 

In spite of the tragedy that darkened his childhood. 



170 A New Nation 

Thomas Lincoln seems to have been a cheery, indolent, good- 
natured man. By means of a little farming and occasional 
jobs at his trade, he managed to supply his family with the 
absolutely necessary food and shelter, but he never got on in 
the world. He found it much easier to gossip with his 
friends, or to dream about rich new lands in the West, than 
to make a thrifty living in the place where he happened to 
be. The blood of the pioneer was in his veins, too — the 
desire to move westward ; and hearing glowing accounts of 
the new territory of Indiana, he resolved to go and see it for 
himself. His skill as a carpenter made this not only possi- 
ble but reasonably cheap, and in the fall of 181 6 he built 
himself a little flatboat, launched it half a mile from his 
cabin, at the mouth of Knob Creek on the waters of the 
Rolling Ford, and floated on it down that stream to Salt 
River, down Salt River to the Ohio, and down the Ohio to 
a landing called Thompson's Ferry on the Indiana shore. 

Sixteen miles out from the river, near a small stream 
known as Pigeon Creek, he found a spot in the forest that 
suited him; and as his boat could not be made to float up- 
stream, he sold it, stored his goods with an obliging settler, 
and trudged back to Kentucky, all the way on foot, to fetch 
his wife and children — Sarah, who was now nine years 
old, and Abraham, seven. This time the journey to Indiana 
was made with two horses, used by the mother and children 
for riding, and to carry their little camping outfit for the 
night. The distance from their old home was, in a straight 
line, little more than fifty miles, but they had to go double 
that distance because of the very few roads it was possible 
to follow. 

Reaching the Ohio River and crossing to the Indiana 
shore, Thomas Lincoln hired a wagon which carried his 



The Early Life of Lincoln 171 

family and their belongings the remaining sixteen miles 
through the forest to the spot he had chosen — a piece of 
heavily wooded land, one and a half miles east of what has 
since become the village of Gentry ville in Spencer County. 
The lateness of the autumn made it possible to put up 
a shelter as quickly as possible, and he built what was 
known on the frontier as a half-faced camp about fourteen 
feet square. This differed from a cabin in that it was 
closed on only three sides, being quite open to the weather on 
the fourth. A fire was usually made in front of the open 
side, and thus the necessity for having a chimney was done 
away with. Thomas Lincoln doubtless intended this only 
for a temporary shelter, and as such it would have done well 
enough in pleasant summer weather ; but it was a rude provi- 
sion against the storms and winds of an Indiana winter. 
It shows his want of energy that the family remained housed 
in this poor camp for nearly a \vhole year; but, after all, he 
must not be too hastily blamed. He was far from idle. A 
cabin was doubtless begun, and there was the very heavy 
work of clearing away the timber — cutting down large 
trees, chopping them into suitable lengths, and rolling them 
together into great heaps to be burned, or splitting them into 
rails to fence the small field upon which he managed to raise 
a patch of corn and other things during the following sum- 
mer. 

Though only seven years old, Abraham was unusually 
large and strong for his age, and he helped his father in all 
this heavy labor of clearing the farm. Writing about it in 
after years, he said : " An ax was put into my hands at 
once, and from that till within my twenty-third year I was 
almost constantly handling that most useful instrument — 
less, of course, in plowing and harvesting seasons." At 



172 ' A New Nation 

first the Lincolns and their seven or eight neighbors lived 
in the unbroken forest. They had only the tools and house- 
hold goods they brought v^ith them, or such things as they 
could fashion with their own hands. There was no saw- 
mill to saw lumber. The village of Gentryville was not 
even begun. Breadstuff could be had only by sending young 
Abraham seven miles on horseback with a bag of corn to 
be ground in a hand grist-mill. 

About the time the new cabin was ready relatives and 
friends followed from Kentucky, and some of these in turn 
occupied the half-faced camp. During the autumn a severe 
and mysterious sickness broke out in their little settlement, 
and a number of people died, among them the mother of 
young Abraham. There was no help to be had beyond what 
the neighbors could give each other. The nearest doctor 
lived fully thirty miles away. There was not even a minis- 
ter to conduct the funerals. Thomas Lincoln made the 
coffins for the dead out of green lumber cut from the forest 
trees with a whip-saw, and they were laid to rest in a clear- 
ing in the woods. Months afterwards, largely through the 
efforts of the sorrowing boy, a preacher who chanced to 
come that way was induced to hold a service and preach a 
sermon over the grave of Mrs. Lincoln. 

Her death was indeed a serious blow to her husband and 
children. Abraham's sister, Sarah, was only eleven years, 
old, and the tasks and cares of the little household were al- 
together too heavy for her years and experience. Never- 
theless they struggled bravely through the winter and follow- 
ing summer; then in the autumn of 1819 Thomas Lincoln 
went back to Kentucky and married Sarah Bush 
Johnston, whom he had known, and it is said 
courted, wdien she was only Sally Bush. She had 



The Early Life of Lincoln 



173 




The log-cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was 
born. 



married about the time Lincoln married Nancy Hanks, 
and her husband had died, leaving her with three children. 
She came of a 7^-, 

better station in ^V^^ 

life than Thom- 
as, and was a 
woman with an 
excellent mind 
as well as a 
warm and gener- 
ous heart. The 
household goods 
that she brought 
with her to the 
Lincoln home filled a four-horse wagon, and not only 
were her own children well clothed and cared for, but she 
was able at once to provide little Abraham and Sarah with 
comforts to which they had been strangers during the whole 
of their young lives. Under her wise management all jeal- 
ousy was avoided between the two sets of children; urged 
on by her stirring example, Thomas Lincoln supplied the 
yet unfinished cabin with floor, door, and windows, and life 
became' more comfortable for all its inmates, contentment if 
not happiness reigning in the little home. 

The new stepmother quickly became very fond of Abra- 
ham, and encouraged him in every way in her power to study 
and improve himself. The chances for this were few 
enough. Mr. Lincoln has left us a vivid picture of the situa- 
tion. " It was," he once wrote, " a wild region with many 
bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I 
grew up. There were some schools, so called, but no 
qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond read- 



174 A New Nation 

ing, writing, and ciphering to the Rule of Three. If a 
straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to so- 
journ in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard." 

The school-house was a low cabin of round logs, with 
split logs or " puncheons " for a floor, split logs roughly 
leveled with an ax and set upon legs for benches, and holes 
cut out in the logs and the space filled in with squares of 
greased paper for window-panes. The main light came in 
through the open door. Very often Webster's " Elementary 
Spelling-book " was the only text-book. This was the kind 
of school most common in the middle west during Mr, Lin- 
coln's boyhood, though already in some places there were 
schools of a more pretentious character. Lideed, back in 
Kentucky, at the very time that Abraham, a child of six, 
was learning his letters from Zachariah Riney, a boy only 
a year older was attending a Catholic seminary in the very 
next county. It is doubtful if- they ever met, but the des- 
tinies of the two were strangely interwoven, for the older 
boy was Jefferson Davis, who became head of the Confed- 
erate government shortly after Lincoln was elected Presi- 
dent of the United States. 

As Abraham had been only seven years old when he left 
Kentucky, the little beginnings he learned in the schools 
kept by Riney and Hazel in that State must have been very 
slight, probably only his alphabet, or at most only three or 
four pages of Webster's " Elementary Spelling-book." The 
multiplication-table was still a mystery to him, and he could 
read or write only the words he spelled. His first two years 
in Indiana seem to have passed without schooling of any 
sort, and the school he attended shortly after coming under 
the care of his stepmother was of the simplest kind, for the 
Pigeon Creek settlement numbered only eight or ten poor 



The Early Life of Lincoln 175 

families, and tliey lived deep in the forest, where, even if 
they had had the money for such luxuries, it would have 
been impossible to buy books, slates, pens, ink, or paper. It 
is worthy of note, however, that in our Western country, 
even under such difficulties, a school-house was one of the 
first buildings to rise in every frontier settlement. Abra- 
ham's second school in Indiana was held when he was four- 
teen years old, and the third in his seventeenth year. By 
that time he had more books and better teachers, but he had 
to walk four or five miles to reach them. We know that he 
learned to write, and was provided with pen, ink, and a copy- 
book — a very small supply of writing-paper, for copies have 
been printed of several scraps on which he carefully wrote 
down tables of long measure, land measure, and dry measure, 
as well as examples in multiplication and compound division, 
from his arithmetic. He was never able to go to school 
again after this time and though the instruction he received 
from his five teachers — two in Kentucky and three in 
Indiana — extended over a period of nine years, it must be 
remembered that it made up in all less than one twelvemonth ; 
" that the aggregate of all his schooling did not amount to 
one year." The fact that he received this instruction, as he 
himself said, " by littles," was doubtless an advantage. A 
lazy or indifferent boy would of course have forgotten what 
was taught him at one time before he had opportunity at an- 
other; but Abraham was neither indifferent nor lazy, and 
these widely separated fragments of instruction were pre- 
cious steps to self-help. He pursued his studies with very 
unusual purpose and determination not only to understand 
them at the moment, but to fix them firmly in his mind. His 
early companions all agree that he employed every spare mo- 
ment in keeping on with some one of his studies. His step- 



176 



A New Nation 



mother tells us that when he came across a passage that struck 
him, he would write it clown on boards if he had no paper, 
and keep it there until he did get paper. Then he would re- 
write it, look at it, repeat it. He had a copy-book, a kind of 
scrap-book, in which he put down all things, and thus pre- 
served them. He spent long evenings doing sums on the fire- 
shovel. Iron fire-shovels were a rarity among pioneers. 
Instead they used a broad, thin clapboard with one end nar- 
rowed to a handle, 



arranging with this 
the piles of coals 
upon the hearth, 
over which they set 
their " skillet " and 
" oven " to do their 
cooking. It was 
on such a wooden 
shovel that Abra- 
ham worked his 
sums by the flick- 
ering firelight, mak- 
ing his figures with 
a piece of charcoal, 
and when the shov- 
el was all covered, 
taking a drawing- 
knife and 




y<4/t4/fty*\ — 



-yi'i- --L -■■},% 






/Jbi^am Lint«fn HuBooIr 



Leaf, reduced in size, from Abraham Lin- 
coln's exercise book, written about his 
seventeenth year. 



shaving- 
it off clean again. 

The hours that 
he was able to de- 
vote to his pen- 
manship, his read- 



The Early Life of Lincoln 177 

ing, and his arithmetic were by no means many; for, 
save for the short time that he was actually in school, he 
was, during all these years, laboring hard on his father's 
farm, or hiring his youthful strength to neighbors who had 
need of help in the work of field or forest. In pursuit of his 
knowledge he was on an up-hill path; yet in spite of all ob- 
stacles he worked his way to so much of an education as 
placed him far ahead of his schoolmates and quickly abreast 
of his various teachers. He borrowed every book in the 
neighborhood. The list is a short one : " Robinson Crusoe," 
" T^sop's Fables," Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," Weems's 
" Life of Washington," and a " History of the United 
States." When everything else had been read, he resolutely 
began on the " Revised Statutes of Indiana," which Dave 
Turnham, the constable, had in daily use, but permitted him 
to come to his house and read. 

Though so fond of his books, it must not be supposed that 
he cared only for work and serious study. He was a social, 
sunny-tempered lad, as fond of jokes and fun as he was 
kindly and industrious. His stepmother said to him : " I 
can say, what scarcely one mother in a thousand can say, 
Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never re- 
fused to do anything I asked him. I must say that Abe was 
the best boy I ever saw or expect to see." 

He and John Johnston, his stepmother's son, and John 
Hanks, a relative of his own mother's, worked barefoot to- 
gether in the fields, grubbing, plowing, hoeing, gathering and 
shucking corn, and taking part, when occasion offered, in the 
practical jokes and athletic exercises that enlivened the hard 
work of the pioneers. For both work and play Abraham 
had one great advantage. He was not only a tall, strong 

country boy : he soon grew to be a tall, strong, sinewy man. 
12 



178 A New Nation 

He early reached the unusual height of six feet four inches, 
and his long arms gave him a degree of power as an axmaii 
that few were able to rival. He therefore usually led his 
fellows in efforts of muscle as well as of mind. That he 
could outrun, outlift, outwrestle his boyish companions, that 
he could chop faster, split more rails in a day, carry a heavier 
log at a " raising," or excel the neighborhood champion in 
any feat of frontier athletics, was doubtless a matter of pride 
with him ; but stronger than all else was his eager craving for 
knowledge. He felt instinctively that the power of using the 
mind rather than the muscles was the key to success. He 
wished not only to wrestle with the best of them, but to be 
able to talk like the preacher, spell and cipher like the school- 
master, argue like the lawyer, and write like the editor. 

Yet he was as far as possible from being a prig. He was 
helpful, sympathetic, cheerful. In all the neighborhood 
gatherings, when settlers of various ages came together at 
corn-huskings or house-raisings, or when mere chance 
brought half a dozen of them at the same time to the post- 
office or the country store, he was able, according to his 
years, to add his full share to the gaiety of the company. 
By reason of his reading and his excellent memory, he soon 
became the best story-teller among his companions; and 
even the slight training gained from his studies greatly 
broadened and strengthened the strong reasoning faculty 
with which he had been gifted by nature. His wit might be 
mischievous, but it was never malicious, and his nonsense 
was never intended to wound or to hurt the feelings. It is 
told of him that he added to his fund of jokes and stories 
humorous imitations of the sermons of eccentric preachers. 

Very likely too much is made of all these boyish pranks. 
He grew up very like his fellows. In only one particular 



The Early Life of Lincoln 179 

did he differ greatly from the frontier boys around him. He 
never took any pleasure in hunting. Almost every youth of 
the backwoods early became an excellent shot and confirmed 
sportsman. The woods still swarmed with game, and every 
cabin depended largely upon this for its supply of food. But 
to his strength was added a gentleness which made him 
shrink from killing or inflicting pain, and the time the other 
boys gave to lying in ambush, he preferred to spend in read- 
ing or in efforts at improving his mind. 

Only twice during his life in Indiana was the routine of 
his employment changed. When he was about sixteen years 
old he worked for a time for a man who lived at the mouth 
of Anderson's Creek, and here part of his duty was to 
manage a ferry-boat which carried passengers across the 
Ohio River. It was very likely this experience which, three 
'ears later, brought him another. Mr. Gentry, the chief man 
of the village of Gentryville, that had grown up a mile or 
so from his father's cabin, loaded a flatboat on the Ohio 
River with the produce his store had collected, — corn, flour, 
pork, bacon, and other miscellaneous provisions, — and put- 
ting it in charge of his son Allen Gentry and of Abraham 
Lincoln, sent them with it down the Ohio and Mississippi 
rivers, to sell its cargo at the plantations of the lower Miss- 
issippi, where sugar and cotton were the principal crops, and 
where other food supplies were needed to feed the 
slaves. No better proof is needed of the reputation for 
strength, skill, honesty, and intelligence that this tall country 
boy had already won for himself, than that he was chosen to 
navigate the flatboat a thousand miles to the " sugar-coast " 
of the Mississippi River, sell its load, and bring back the 
money. Allen Gentry was supposed to be in command, but 
from the record of his after life we may be sure that Abra- 



i8o A New Nation 

ham did his full share both of work and management. The 
elder Gentry paid Lincoln eight dollars a month and his 
passage home on a steamboat for this service. The voyage 
was made successfully, although not v^ithout adventure ; for 
one night, after the boat was tied up to the shore, the boys 
were attacked by seven negroes, who came aboard intending 
to kill and rob them. There was a lively scrimmage, in 
which, though slightly hurt, they managed to beat off their 
assailants, and then, hastily cutting their boat adrift, swung 
out on the stream. The marauding band little dreamed that 
they were attacking the man who in after years was to give 
their race its freedom; and though the future was equally 
hidden from Abraham, it is hard to estimate the vistas of 
hope and ambition that this long journey opened to him. It 
was his first look into the wide, wide world. 



MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY 

By Frederick Douglass ^ 

In the first narrative of my experience in slavery I have 
given the pubHc very good reasons for withholding the man- 
ner of my escape. In substance those reasons were, first, 
that such publication at any time during the existence of 
slavery might be used by the master against the slave, and 
prevent the future escape of any who used the same means 
that I did. The second reason was, if possible, more bind- 
ing to silence : the publication of details would certainly 
have put in peril the persons and property of those who as- 
sisted. Murder itself was not more certainly punished in 
the State of Maryland than that of aiding and abetting the 
escape of a slave. Many colored men for no other crime 
than that of giving aid to a fugitive slave, have, like Charles 
T. Torrey, perished in prison. ... In order to avoid 
fatal scrutiny on the part of railroad officials, I arranged 
with Isaac Rolls, a Baltimore hackman, to bring my baggage 
to the Philadelphia train just on the moment of starting, and 
jumped on the car myself when the train was in motion. 
Had I gone to the station and offered to purchase a ticket, I 
should have been instantly and carefully examined, and un- 
doubtedly arrested. In choosing this plan, I considered the 
jostle of the train and the natural haste of the conductor, in 

1 Afterwards editor of New National Era in Washington, D. C. 
Presidential elector at large for the State of New York, Marshal of 
the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to Hayti. 

i8i 



l82 A New Nation 

a train crowded with passengers, and relied upon my skill and 
address in playing the sailor, as described in my protection, 
to do the rest ; for I had the papers of a friend, a sailor, de- 
scribing his person and certifying to the fact that he was a 
free American sailor. The instrument had at its head the 
American eagle, which gave it the appearance at once of an 
authorized document. It did not describe my appearance 
very accurately. Indeed, it called for a man much darker 
than myself, and a close examination of it would have 
caused my arrest at the very start. . . 

In my clothing, I was rigged out in sailor style. I had on a 
red shirt and a tarpaulin hat, and a black cravat tied in sailor 
fashion carelessly and loosely about my neck. My knowl- 
edge of ships came to my assistance for I knew a ship from 
stern to stern and could talk sailor like an old salt. 

I was well on the way before the conductor came into the 
negro car to collect tickets and examine the papers of the 
black passengers. This was a critical moment in the drama. 
My whole future depended upon the decision of that con- 
ductor. Agitated though I was while this ceremony was 
proceeding, still, externally at least, I was perfectly calm and 
self-possessed. He went on with his duty, examining sev- 
eral colored passengers before reaching me. He was some- 
what harsh in tone and peremptory in manner until he 
reached me, when, strange enough and to my surprise and 
relief, his whole manner changed. Seeing that I did not 
readily produce my free papers, as the other colored persons 
in the car had done he said to me in friendly contrast v/ith 
his bearing toward the others : 

" I suppose you have your free papers? " 

To which I answered : 

" No, sir; I never carry my free papers to sea v/ith me." 



My Escape From Slavery 183 

" But you have something to show that you are a freeman, 
haven't you? " 

" Yes, sir," I answered. " I have a paper with the Ameri- 
can eagle upon it, and that will carry me around the world." 
With this I drew from my deep sailor's pocket my seaman's 
protection. The merest glance at the paper satisfied him 
and he took my fare and went on about his business. This 
moment of time was one of the most anxious I ever expe- 
rienced. Had the conductor looked closely at the paper, he 
could not have failed to discover that it called for a very 
different looking person from myself, and in that case it 
would have been his duty to arrest me on the instant and 
send me back to Baltimore from the first station. 

When he left me with the assurance that I was all right, 
though much relieved I realized that I was still in great 
danger; I was still in Maryland and subject to arrest at any 
moment. I saw several persons on the train who would 
have known me in any other clothes, and I feared they might 
recognize me, even in my sailor " rig " and report me to the 
conductor, who would then subject me to a closer examina- 
tion, which I knew well would be fatal to me. 

Though I was not a murderer fleeing from justice, I felt 
perhaps quite as miserable as such a criminal. The train 
was moving at a very high rate of speed for that epoch of 
railway travel, but to my anxious mind it was moving far 
too slowly. Minutes were hours, and hours were days 
during this part of my flight. After Maryland I was to pass 
through Delaware, another slave State, where slave-catchers 
generally awaited their prey, for it was not in the interior of 
the State but on its borders, that these human hounds were 
most vigilant and active. The border lines between free- 
dom and slavery were the dangerous ones for fugitives. 



184 A New Nation 

The heart of no fox or deer, with hungry hounds on his 
trail in full chase, could have beaten more anxiously or 
noisily than did mine from the time I left Baltimore till I 
reached Philadelphia. 

Once across the Susquehanna River, I encountered a new 
danger. Only a few days before, I had been at work on a 
revenue cutter, in Mr. Price's shipyard in Baltimore, under 
the care of Captain Mac Gowan. On the meeting at this 
point of the two trains, the one going south stopped on the 
track just opposite the one going north, and it so happened 
that this Captain Mac Gowan, sat at a window where he 
could see me very distinctly, and would certainly have recog- 
nized me had he looked at me but for a second. Fortu- 
nately, in the hurry of the moment, he did not see me; and 
the trains soon passed each other on their respective ways. 

But this was not my only hairbreadth escape. A Ger- 
man blacksmith whom I knew well was on the train with me, 
and looked at me very intently, as if he thought he had seen 
me somewhere before in his travels. I really believe he 
knew me but had no heart to betray me. At any rate he saw 
me escaping and held his peace. 

The last point of imminent danger, and the one I dreaded 
most, was Wilmington. Here we left the train and took 
the steamboat for Philadelphia. In making the change I 
apprehended arrest, but no one disturbed me and I was soon 
on the broad and beautiful Delaware speeding away to the 
Quaker City. On reaching Philadelphia in the afternoon I 
asked a colored man how I could get on to New York. He 
directed me to the William Street depot and thither I went, 
taking the train that night. I reached New York in the 
morning, having completed the journey in less than twenty- 
four hours. 



My Escape From Slavery 185 

My free life began on the third of September, 1838. On 
the morning of the fourth of that month, after an anxious 
and most perilous but safe journey, I found myself in the 
big city of New York, a free man — one more added to the 
mighty throng which, like the confused waves of the troubled 
sea, surged to and fro between the lofty walls of Broadway. 

Though dazzled with the wonders which met me on every 
hand, my thoughts could not be much withdrawn from my 
strange situation. For the moment the dreams of my youth 
and the hopes of my manhood were completely fulfilled. 
The bands that had held me to " Old Master " were broken. 
No man now had a right to call me his slave or assert his 
mastery over me. I was in the rough and tumble of an out- 
door world, to take my chance with the rest of its busy num- 
ber, I have often been asked how I felt when first I found 
myself on free soil. There is scarcely anything in my expe- 
rience about which I could not give a more satisfactory an- 
swer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more 
than breath, and the '' quick round of blood," I lived more 
in that one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a 
time of joyous excitement which words can but faintly de- 
scribe. 




THE 

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS 

DEBATES 

Fifty "Vfears After 

BY 
FREDERICK TREVOR HILL 




THE FIRST DAY OTTAWA, ILLINOIS 

On Friday, August 20, 1858, work was virtually suspended 
in the outlying districts, and all the local world was in 
holiday mood. Under clouds of dust and a burning summer 
sun, straggling processions of people on foot, on horseback, 
in hay carts and in canvas-covered wagons occupied every 
turnpike and country lane leading to Ottawa. Despite its 
political differences, it was a friendly, good-natured crowd 
that spread itself over the bluffs and rolling prairie. Fam- 
ily groups and neighborhood parties fraternized with one 
another, hospitality was proffered, provisions were shared, 
and the coming event was discussed without bitterness or 
hard feeling of any kind. Thus passed the eve of the mo- 
mentous duel. 

Saturday dawned clear, and before the sun was fairly up, 
the advance-guard of the audience began to pour into the lit- 
tle town. 

On the court-house green a rough, undecorated, pine- 
board platform had been erected, but no seats had been 
provided for the audience, and the square itself was without 
sufficient trees to protect them from the sun. Not dis- 
couraged by this uninviting prospect, many of the first- 

186 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 187 

comers sat down on the grass in front of the speakers' 
stand and settled themselves for a long wait rather than 
lose the advantage of their early start, and others 
manoeiivered their carts into favorable positions at the edge 
of the scjuare, where they formed a sort of improvised 
gallery. 

There was confidence in every line of Douglas's clear- 
cut, clean-shaven face as he stepped to the front of the 
platform and bowed to the cheering multitude, and when 
his awkward rival stood beside him, he had no reason 
to distrust the effect of the inevitable comparison. 

No time was lost in initiating the contest. Neither 
speaker required any introduction, and Douglas began by 
outlining the rules of the debate. He was to open with 
a speech of one hour, and close with another of half an 
hour after Lincoln had replied for an hour and a half, 
and at the next meeting these conditions were to be re- 
versed. Only a small proportion of the mighty assemblage 
could possibly hope to hear the speakers, and those in 
wagons at the outskirts of the crowd, finding themselves 
at a disadvantage, soon abandoned their positions and edged 
their way into the throng. Nevertheless, there was very 
little movement in the audience, and there was virtually 
no interruption. Once when Douglas sneeringly quoted a 
part of Lincoln's " House-divided-against-itself " speech, 
the Republicans burst into applause, which brought an angry 
response from the unwary orator; and when Lincoln be- 
gan by reading a document, some one in the crowd shouted, 
" Put on your specs ! " possibly anticipating a smart re- 
ply. But Lincoln was in no joking mood. " Yes, sir," 
he responded gravely : '' I am obliged to do so. I am no 
longer a young man." 



i88 A New Nation 

Then for an hour and a half he held that mighty audience 
by the sheer force of his personality and the intense in- 
terest of his theme. Now and again there was a burst 
of cheering, but the speaker made no effort at oratorical 
effect and employed no device to lighten his argument. 
Douglas was not yet as serious as his adversary, for he had 
entered light-heartedly upon the contest, and did not im- 
mediately realize the magnitude of the task he had under- 
taken. From the very start he assumed the offensive and 
continued his attack, scarcely deigning to notice his op- 
ponent's replies, throughout the day. Even when some Re- 
publican enthusiasts stormed the platform at the close of 
that eventful evening and attempted to carry Lincoln off 
upon their shoulders, he affected to believe that he had so 
completely exhausted his adversary as to necessitate his re- 
moval from the field. One week later he began to take 
a less jaunty view of the situation. 

SECOND DAY FREEPORT, ILLINOIS 

On Friday August 27th, Freeport heard what was per- 
haps the most momentous of the debates. 

No seats of any sort had been provided, and yet a throng 
even greater than that at Ottawa gathered long before the 
appointed time, prepared to stand during the whole of the 
three-hour struggle. Douglas arrived on the scene shortly 
before three o'clock, in the same coach and four which 
had been placed at his disposal earlier in the day, and his 
appearance was evidently designed to impress and awe the 
country folk. Certainly he received a rousing welcome; 
but the cheers had scarcely ceased before the crowd burst 
into a shout of laughter, for just at that moment an old- 
fashioned Conestoga wagon, drawn by six draft-horses, 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 189 

lumbered into view, and on one of the high seats of this 
clumsy conveyance sat Lincoln, accompanied by half a dozen 
farmers in their working clothes. The rear nigh horse 
was guided by a rider with a single rein, and the harness 




ot the rest of the team consisted of old-fashioned wide 
straps and chain traces. In fact, the burlesque on Douglas's 
ceremonial coach had been made as complete as possible, 
and the good-natured roar which greeted it demonstrated 
its effect. 



190 A New Nation 

The Hon. Thomas J. Turner, Republican Moderator, 
promptly called the meeting to order, and it was a friendly 
audience to which he introduced his candidate; for Free- 
port was almost on the northern border of Illinois, where 
anti-slavery sentiment prevailed even more strongly than 
at Ottawa. But in this part of the State Lincoln was al- 
most a stranger, and his uncouth appearance and slouchy 
bearing were not offset by any direct knowledge of his 
professional attainments. On this occasion, however, he 
speedily dispelled all doubts of his ability by advancing 
boldly to the attack. Reminding his auditors that Douglas 
had seen fit to cross-examine him at their last meeting, 
he announced that he was prepared to answer the seven 
questions which had been put to him provided his adversary 
would reply to questions from him not exceeding the same 
number. " I give him an opportunity to respond," he an- 
nounced, and, turning to Douglas, paused for his reply. 

In an instant the vast audience was hushed. Even the 
fakirs and vendors at the outskirts of the crowd ceased 
plying their trades and strove to catch a glimpse of the 
platform. It was a dramatic moment, and an unequaled 
opportunity for Douglas ; but he merely shook his head and 
smiled. " The judge remains silent," continued Lincoln. 
" I now say that I will answer his interrogatories whether he 
answers mine or not." 

No more effective challenge was ever uttered, and the 
audience, quick to recognize its courage and fairness, re- 
sponded in a fashion that must have disconcerted and nettled 
Lincoln's cautious adversary. Certainly Douglas was in 
no amiable mood when he rose to make reply, and the 
interruptions of the audience speedily worked him into a 
passion. Again and again he assailed his hearers as " Black 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 191 

Republicans," characterizing their questions as vulgar and 
blackguard interruptions, shaking his fist in their faces, 
and defying them as a mob. More than once Mr. Turner, 
the Republican Moderator, was drawn into the fray by the 
speaker's aggressive tactics, and the whole meeting was oc- 
casionally on the verge of tumult. Lincoln's closing ad- 
dress, however, had a calming effect, and when his time 
expired, the audience quietly dispersed, to spread the news 
throughout the countryside that this unknown lawyer was 
actually out-manoeuvering his distinguished adversary and 
forcing him into the open, beyond reach of cover or pos- 
sibility of retreat. 

THIRD DAY JONESBORO, ILLINOIS 

Nearly three weeks elapsed before the combatants re- 
newed their struggle, and then the scene of battle was shifted 
to the extreme south of Illinois, a region known as " Egypt," 
controlled by the Democracy, but favoring Buchanan rather 
than Douglas. Here Lincoln had few friends, but there 
was a great chance for winning them, and he had determined 
to make the most of his opportunity by carefully preparing 
for the event. 

Jonesboro, the site selected for this contest, was then 
a little village of not more than twelve hundred inhabitants. 
It was situated nearly a mile and a half from the railroad 
station, which was known as Anna, and the station, said to 
be as large as the town, was reputedly opposed to it polit- 
ically, the former being Republican and the latter Dem- 
ocratic. 

About a quarter of a mile from the center of the town 
lay the fair grounds, and here the speakers' platform had 
been erected, and some attempt made at providing the audi- 



192 A New Nation 

ence with seats. The accommodations, however, proved 
wholly inadequate, though not more than fifteen hundred 
persons attended, and most of them were obliged to stand 
during the whole afternoon. No processions or demonstra- 
tions of any kind preceded the meeting. Douglas drove to 
the fair grounds in a carriage, accompanied by a few ad- 
mirers, and Lincoln walked there with a friend. 

Douglas had taunted his adversary with being afraid to 
appear in southern Illinois, and prophesied a sorry experi- 
ence for him when he was " trotted down to Egypt." This 
was mere pleasantry, of course, for at the first indication of 
hostility toward the Republican candidate, his adversary in- 
stantly silenced it with a sharp reproof, and the meeting 
passed off quietly. But Douglas was not in good form dur- 
ing the contest, his speech being poorly delivered, as though 
he were indifferent as to the effect he produced, while Lin- 
coln, who had come to persuade, devoted his best power to 
that end. Even the jeer of being afraid to visit this hotbed 
of Democracy he turned to his advantage. " Why, I know 
this people better than Judge Douglas does ! " he exclaimed. 
" I was raised just a little east of here. I am a part of this 
people." 

Certainly a part of that people was Lincoln's at the close 
of that autumn day. He had given them food for reflec- 
tion. He was making the whole country think. 

FOURTH DAY CHARLESTON, ILLINOIS 

Only three days intervened before the rivals met again, 
and this time they appeared at Charleston, in Coles County, 
on Saturday, September 18, 1858. 

A large number of benches had been prepared for the audi- 
ence, but the crowd which surged into the fair grounds as 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 193 

early as one o'clock numbered fully five thousand and far 
exceeded the accommodations, and again most of the audi- 
tors stood while Lincoln and Douglas closed with each other 
for the fourth time. Not all of those who listened with 
rapt attention to the earnest speakers, however, were directly 
concerned in the contest, for the whole county was beginning 
to take an interest in it, and a large delegation of men, 
women, and children had arrived during the morning from 
Indiana in farm-wagons, carriages, and on horseback, and 
the number of women in attendance was specially noticeable. 
Indeed, the pilgrimage of all the countryside to this inaccessi- 
ble town, miles away from a railroad, was one ^f the most 
significant features of this remarkable campaign, and one of 
those who was present comments upon the " hot feverish' 
flush " which characterized the interest of the audience. 

Lincoln had the opening speech, and again he lost no time 
in advancing to the attack. In fact, Douglas was now 
clearly on the defensive, and in this position he was plainly ill 
at ease. For once at least his air of confidence and supe- 
riority completely disappeared, and his supporters were 
sorely disappointed at his showing. 

FIFTH DAY GALESBURG, ILLINOIS 

Election day was almost in sight, and the campaign was at 
its height, before the rivals met again. Meanwhile the 
Republicans had been gaining confidence and courage, for- 
cing their opponents to fight as they had not fought for years, 
and both sides strained every nerve to make the joint meet- 
ing at Galesburg, scheduled for Thursday, October 7, a 
memorable event. Galesburg itself began preparing for the 
fray weeks in advance, for accounts of the other meetings 
showed that a supreme effort would have to be made to sur- 

13 



194 A New Nation 

pass the reception accorded by less important centers, and 
the citizens rose to the occasion. 

Thus far there had been Httle or no effort at any of the 
joint debates to organize the processions upon mihtary hnes 
or to make any great display of flags or banners. But now 
the Republicans had formed marching clubs all over the 
State, generally known as the " Wide-awakes," uniformed 
with a distinctive cap and cape, and these companies were the 
feature of the day at Galesburg. The Democrats, whose 
electioneering devices had at first encountered no competi- 
tion, were now hard pressed to match their rivals, and their 
banners acclaiming " Douglas the Little Giant " and " The 
Constitution as it is " were met by others celebrating " Abe 
the Giant-Killer " and " The Constitution as it ought to be," 
while similar placards and mottos challenged and answered 
each other on every side as the rival organizations moved 
past each other, winding through the streets with defiant 
shouts and jeers, but no clash save that of the bands. 

All this time more and more people were pouring into 
the town, and by half -past two fully fifteen thousand persons 
were massed on the college campus. Again, as at Ottawa, a 
line of farm-wagons fringed the outskirts of the crowd ; 
but this time every available tree and roof-top was occupied 
as well as the space before the platform. 

Neither speaker any longer cared for applause. Every 
moment had become precious for attack or defense, and 
Douglas protested that he desired to be heard rather than 
cheered. There was now no flippancy or arrogancy about 
the man. He was in deadly earnest, and when aroused, 
there was no more formidable antagonist in the United 
States than he. 

There was no mistaking the temper of the audience when 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 195 

Douglas made his closing" speech. When he charged that 
Lincoln included the negro in that part of the Declaration 
which asserts that all men are created equal, the crowd 
shouted, " We believe it ! " When he quoted Lincoln's 
statement that slavery was a crime, they answered " He's 
right ! " When he asserted that Lovejoy stood pledged 
against any more slave States, the response was "Right! 
So do we ! " And when he arraigned his adversary on the 
same charge, his hearers cheered for Lincoln. 

In the absence of an authoritative decision, neither candi- 
date can be said to have been the victor at any of the debates, 
but all the external evidence is that at Galesburg Lincoln car- 
ried the day. 

SIXTH DAY QUINCY, ILLINOIS 

In 1858, Quincy, the terminus of the Chicago, Burling- 
ton & Quincy Railroad, was a town of about fourteen thou- 
sand inhabitants, and its transportation facilities, both by 
land and water, made it one of the most important business 
centers of Illinois. Here it was to be expected that the 
rival candidates would meet with a great reception, and the 
local newspapers published full details of the preparations of 
both parties in honor of their visit. The Republicans were 
first in the field, and completed their arrangements by the 
nth of October, but the Democrats were only a day behind 
them, and their program was perhaps the more elaborate. 

The debate occurred on Wednesday, October 13, 1858. 
Lincoln arrived by rail on the evening of the 12th in the 
company of Carl Schurz, who had accidentally met him on 
the train, and a reception committee bundled him into a 
carriage despite his protest that he would rather " foot it 
to Browning's," meaning O. H. Browning's house, where he 



196 



A New Nation 



was to pass the night. No formal reception was, how- 
ever, forced upon him, and he was soon left to his own 
devices at the home of his old friend. Douglas was less 
fortunate, for he was met at the station by a torchlight pro- 
cession over half a mile long and escorted with music and 
cheers to the Democratic headquarters at the Ouincy House. 
Then followed a noisy night, during which the local and 
visiting political clubs fraternized, celebrated, and planned 
for the great to-morrow. 

Lincoln opened the debate, and again the first impression 
made upon the audience was distinctly unfavorable. The 
splendid carrying quality of his voice, however, enabled 
him to reach the very outskirts of the crowd and 
he soon riveted its attention, while Douglas writhed and 
scowled under his relentless attack. Indeed, Douglas's 
nerves were fast giving way under the tremendous strain 
of the campaign; his face had grown pufify, his voice had 
become so husky that what he said was audible only to those 
close to the platform, and his whole appearance had decid- 
edly changed for the worse during the last two months. 
But his courage did not falter, and he returned his adver- 
sary's thrusts with almost ferocious zeal, hoarsely denoun- 
cing and defying him with all the power of a skilled forensic 
gladiator, hard pressed and fighting desperately against 
time. Lincoln fully realized his advantage, and he drove 
it home when his turn came to close. Yet every w^ord he 
uttered was addressed to a far wider audience than that in 
his immediate presence. His aim was to make the people 
think, and all his personal interest in the campaign was 
subservient to this end. To quote his own words, the run- 
ning fight with Douglas had become " the successive acts of 
a drama enacted not merely in the face of audiences like 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 197 

these, but in the face of the nation and to some extent in 
the face of the world." 

SEVENTH DAY ALTON, ILLINOIS 

Alton virtually held a Feast of Banners on that clear 
Indian summer afternoon when Lincoln and Douglas 
closed with each other for the seventh and last time. 

The speakers addressed the assemblage from a platform 
erected at the northeast corner of the City Hall, and here 
a few thousand persons had gathered, many of whom had 
journeyed from St. Louis on the steamers Baltimore and 
White Cloud which had arrived during the day. 

Douglas had the opening and closing word, and for the 
first time during the contest he indulged in no personalities, 
but devoted himself to argument, inveighing only against 
the Buchanan administration, which he bitterly attacked, 
to the delight of his Republican auditors. Indeed, when 
Lincoln rose to reply, informally heralded by an enthusias- 
tic Democrat, who defiantly shouted, " Now let old Long 
Legs come out ! " he " came out " with such humorous refer- 
erences to the Democratic feud that the audience, largely 
composed of Douglas men, was plainly disconcerted, and 
not a little dismayed. It was only for a moment, however, 
that Lincoln permitted himself to be diverted from serious 
discussion of the issues. He had before him a large body 
of Democratic voters, and to them he addressed himself 
with unanswerable logic and great tact. 

Douglas presented a really pitiable appearance, for he 
was utterly worn out and evidently at the point of collapse. 
His voice, which had been in poor condition at Ouincy, was, 
now almost gone, and, to quote one of his hearers, " every 
tone came forth enveloped in an echo. You heard the 



198 A New Nation 

voice, but caught no meaning." Notwithstanding this, he 
struggled bravely to hold the attention of his auditors, and 
his closing words were an appeal for his favorite " Popular 
Sovereignty " theory, which Lincoln had stripped of its 
sophistical veneer until, as he said, it had as little substance 
as the soup which was made by boiling the shadow of a 
pigeon that had been starved to death. 

Thus ended the momentous contest which resulted in an 
unprecedented Republican vote and a clear popular major- 
ity for Lincoln; the election of Douglas to the Senate by 
the Legislature, where the votes of his adherents, based on 
an obsolete census, gave them the control ; the nomination 
of Lincoln for the Presidency, and the disruption of the 
Democratic party. Nor was this all, for as one of the 
keenest students of our political history has written, " The 
debate was not a mere episode in American politics. It 
marked an era," 



A DOUGLAS ARGUMENT 
• By Stephen A, Douglas 

Lincoln now takes his stand and proclaims his Abolition 
doctrines. Let me read a part of them. In his speech at 
Springfield to the Convention, which nominated him for 
the Senate, l\e said : 

" In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have 
been reached and passed. ' A house divided against itself 
cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure 
permanently half Slave and half Free. I do not expect the 
Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall 

— hut I do expect it will cease to he divided. It will be- 
come all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents 
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it 
where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the 
course of ultimate extinction or its advocates will push 
it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States 

— old as well as new, North as well as South." 

I am delighted to hear you Black Republicans say " good." 
I have no doubt that doctrine expresses your sentiments, and 
I will prove to you now, if you will listen to me, that it is 
revolutionary and destructive of the existence of this Gov- 
ernment. Mr. Lincoln, in the extract from which I have 
read, says that this Government cannot endure permanently 
in the same condition in which it was made by its framers 

199 



200 A New Nation 

— divided into free and slave States. He says that it has 
existed for about seventy years thus divided, and yet he 
tells you that it cannot endure permanently on the same 
principles and in the same relative condition in which our 
fathers made it. Why can it not exist divided into free and 
slave States? Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, 
Hamilton, Jay, and the great men of that day, made this 
Government divided into free States and slave States, and 
left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the sub- 
ject of slavery. Why can it not exist on the same principles 
on which our fathers made it ? They knew when they 
framed the Constitution that in a country as wide and broad 
as this, with such a variety of climate, production and inter- 
est, the people necessarily required different laws and in- 
stitutions in different localities. They knew that the laws 
and regulations which would suit the granite hills of New 
Hampshire would be unsuited to the rice plantations of 
South Carolina, and they, therefore, provided that each 
State should retain its own Legislature and its own sover- 
eignty, with the full and complete power to do as it pleased 
within its own limits, in all that was local and not national. 
One of the reserved rights of the States, was the right to 
regulate the relations between Master and Servant, on the 
slavery question. At the time the Constitution was framed, 
there were thirteen States in the Union, twelve of which 
were slaveholding States and one a free State. Suppose this 
doctrine of uniformity preached by Mr. Lincoln, that the 
States should all be free or all be slave had [M'evailed, and 
what would have been the result? Of course, the twelve 
slaveholding States would have overruled the one free State, 
and slavery would have been fastened by a Constitutional 



A Douglas Argument 201 

provision on every inch of the American Republic, instead 
of being left as our fathers wisely left it, to each State to 
decide for itself. Here I assert that uniformity in the local 
laws and institutions of the different States is neither possi- 
ble nor desirable. If uniformity had been adopted when the 
Government was established, it must inevitably have been 
the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or else the uniformity 
of negro citizenship and negro equality everywhere. 

We are told by Lincoln that he is utterly opposed to the 
Dred Scott decision, and will not submit to it, for the reason 
that he says it depri\-es the negro of the rights and privileges 
of citizenship. That is the first and main reason which he 
assigns for his warfare on the Supreme Court of the United 
States and its decision. I ask you, are you in favor of con- 
ferring upon the negro the rights and privileges of citizen- 
ship ? Do you desire to strike out of our State Constitution 
that clause which keeps slaves and free negroes out of the 
State, and allow the free negroes to flow in, and cover your 
prairies with black settlements? Do you desire to turn this 
beautiful State into a free negro colony, in order that when 
Missouri abolishes slavery she can send one hundred thou- 
sand emancipated slaves into Illinois, to become citizens and 
voters, on an equality with yourselves? If you desire negro 
citizenship, if you desire to allow them to come into the 
State and settle with the white man, if you desire them to 
vote on an equality with yourselves, and to make them eligi- 
ble to ot^ce, to serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, 
then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party,, 
who are in favor of the citizenship of the negro. 
For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every 
form. I believe this Government was made on the white 



202 A New Nation 

basis. I believe it was made by white men, for the benefit 
of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in 
favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of Euro- 
pean birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, 
Indians, and other inferior races. 



THE AUTHOR OF " UNCLE TOM'S CABIN " 
By Richard Burton 

In any brief sketch of the personaHty and career of 
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, it is proper to regard her 
chiefly as the creator of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," a novel 
which had its share in changing the Constitution of the 
United States, and which, as Emerson has it, " encircled the 
globe, and was the only book that found readers in the par- 
lor, the nursery, and the kitchen of every household." 

Harriet Beecher came of a most distinguished American 
family, Lyman Beecher's name speaking for itself, while 
his first wife, Rosanna Foote, Harriet's mother, was a re- 
markable woman, of stock than which Connecticut can 
boast no better. That a girl thus born should have had a 
predisposition to books and, even more, to the things of the 
spirit was, one might say, foreordained, if there is aught 
in ancestry. Her home nurture and her educational ad- 
vantages were such as to fit out a future writer of intense 
moral earnestness. Yet with these distinctly superior and 
cultivated antecedents w'ent the New England plainness, 
the Puritan simplicity, even a touch of Spartan deprivation. 
Lyman Beecher became a famous man, a shining light of 
the American pulpit ; but he was a very poor and obscure 
one in 1811, when in the flower month of June, and in the 
beautiful old Connecticut hill-town of Litchfield, his sixth 
child, Harriet, was born. 

The little daughter early showed her bookishness, and at 

203 



204 



A New Nation 





the age of six was 
finding delight in the 
'* Arabian Nights." 
At ten she was fasci- 
nated A\ith the more 
often dreaded task of 
theme-writing, and at 
twehe she produced 
a paper with the fol- 
lowing title : " Can the 
Immortality of the 
Soul be Proved by the 
Liglit of Nature? "— 
a thesis gravely an- 
swered in the nega- 
tive. Her schooling- 
was obtained at the 
Litchfield Academy, 
and then at her sister 
Catherine's noted school at Hartford, wh.ere, at thirteen, we 
find her turning Ovid into English verse. Lyman Beecher's 
removal to Boston in 1826, ostensibly to comljat the new 
heresy of Unitarianism, had the incidental advantage of 
offering to his family a wider and richer social life; and the 
same is true of the new experiences which came a few years 
later when he was called to the presidency of Lane Semi- 
nary near Cincinnati, in what then seemed the very West. 
Harriet taught for a while in the seminary in Cincinnati of 
which Catherine, who had moved thither with her kith 
and kin, was the head. Playful fancy, quick sensibility, 
keen intelligence, and, underlying all, fullness of religious 
experience, characterized Harriet Beecher, when, in 1836, 



Harriet Becchcr Stowe, 1888. 



Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 205 

at the age of twenty-five, she was married to Professor 
Calvin Stowe, professor of BibHcal Theology in the Lane 
Seminary. Mrs. Stowe was at that period of her life, and' 
for years thereafter, a woman of delicate health, reminding 
one, indeed, of j\Irs. Browning in smallness and fragility. 

Two years before she had won a literary prize of fifty 
dollars, which turned her thought toward writing as a pos- 
sible work. This tentative effort, a tale called " Uncle 
Lot " (a half prophecy in title), induced the embryo writer 
to devote her rather scant leisure time thereafter to her pen. 
Gradually, too, the great theme which was later to enlist 
all the sympathy of her woman's soul was suggested by 
local happenings. Antislavery agitations in Cincinnati dur- 
ing these years were stirring, and at times even spectacular. 
We get in letters a vivid picture of the mobbing of a news- 
paper office when Henry Ward Beecher was the editor of 
The Journal, and, with pistols in his pocket, fulminated 
against slavery. In 1839 a colored domestic was taken into 
the family, and it was found necessary to spirit her away 
some miles into the country, in order to prevent her re- 
capture by her former Southern owmer. But even when 
health permitted, home duties sadly interfered with literary 
work, of which little was accomplished. Yet there was 
small doubt in the Stowe household that she was called to 
literature, and when, in 1849, her husband accepted a pro- 
fessorship in Bowdoin College, Maine, and the family re- 
moved to New England, Mrs. Stowe knew herself to be 
ripe to write the epic of the slave. In 1850 she took a burn- 
ing interest in the Fugitive Slave Law, and when the sug- 
gestion came from her brother's wife, Mrs. Edward Beecher, 
to make a story on slavery, she was ready for the task. It 
was a time of moment to the world when, in the little 



2o6 A New Nation 

Brunswick parlor, the young wife and mother, after read- 
ing the letter, crushed it in her hand, rose from her chair, 
and exclaimed: " I will write something. I will if I live! " 
Never was fiction born more directly and honestly of ethical 
interest and indignation. It was, as her son says, the cry 
of a woman's heart, not of her head at all. The super- 
eminent merits, the artistic defects, of the work are thus ex- 
plained. There was behind it an American mother sensi- 
tive to liberty, with memories of Bunker Hill and Concord 
in her mind,, who had loved and lost children of her own, 
and who came of a stock dedicated by principle and prac- 
tice to the pursuit of righteousness. 

Thus instigated by her kinsfolk to write on a subject her 
soul was full of, an additional incentive came in the shape 
of a letter from Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the Wash- 
ington National Era, requesting her to contribute something 
to its columns. This periodical was in those days of much 
literary merit, Whittier being a corresponding editor, and 
Mrs. Southworth, Alice and Phoebe Gary, and Grace Green- 
wood, among its contributors. Mrs. Stowe began upon the 
story, writing first the scene on the Legree plantation where 
Uncle Tom is so brutally misused. She then penned the 
opening chapters, and sent them to Dr. Bailey, writing in- 
stalment after instalment at Brunswick, as the successive 
parts appeared — a dangerous method of procedure, but in 
this case not seeming to injure the quality or power of the 
tale. The story was published serially from June, 1851, 
to April, 1852. The account of its instant and immense 
success reads almost like a fairytale. The shy, modest 
wife of the country professor awoke, like Byron, to find 
herself famous : the days of poverty were over ; in, four 
months her royalties were ten thousand dollars ; within a 



Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 207 

year three hundred thousand copies were sold in the 
United States alone, while in England forty editions ap- 
peared within the same time. Thus was the most widely, 
sought book of modern times, within the domain of lit- 
erature, started on its course of unprecedented popularity. 
It was dramatized the same year of its publication, and 
the foreign translations also began at once, extending to 
twenty lands, beginning with France. Nor was " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin " merely a popular success. Letters received 
by the author from the leading writers of America and 
England added welcome critical appreciation. One or two 
such may be cited. Longfellow wrote : " I congratulate 




House at Brunswick, Maine, where " Uncic I om's 
Cabin " was written. 

you most cordially upon the immense success and influence 
of ' Uncle Tom's Cabin.' It is one of the greatest triumphs 
recorded in literary history, to say nothing of the higher 
triumph of its moral effect." Needless to say that the 



2o8 • A New Nation 

effect of the story upon public thought both here and 
abroad was electric; the air was surcharged with feeling, 
and ready to become impassioned. Call " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin " special pleading or no, as we will, after its read- 
ing the Missouri Compromise was fel.t to be a monstrous, 
an impossible thing. 

At the age of forty-one, then, Harriet Beecher Stowe 
found herself a writer of transatlantic reputation, whose 
every future book would be an event in the literary world. 
Her first novel was written at forty, when she was a ma- 
ture woman, acquainted with grief, and had lived widely 
and well in the best sense. It may be recalled that George 
Eliot (between whom and Mrs. Stowe a sincere friend- 
ship was destined to spring up) wrote her " Scenes of 
Clerical Life" at thirty-seven — another example of a 
comparatively late turning to fiction by a writer of power. 
Henceforth Mrs. Stowe's experiences were to be broader, 
richer, more varied. In 1852 she went to Europe for 
the first of her three foreign trips, which extended her 
horizon in all ways, and brought her precious friends 
among the chosen of England and elsewhere. Her travel 
was almost a royal progress in respect to the attention 
paid her by the populace, while affectionate ties were formed 
with the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, Charles Kings- 
ley, Lady Byron, John Ruskin, George Eliot, the Brown- 
ings, and many more. Throughout her wanderings, and 
in her contact with all classes in her own country, Mrs. 
Stowe remained what she always was — the simple, un- 
pretending American woman, who regarded her gift as a 
trust from God, and was weighed down with a sense of its 
responsibility. Naturally of a retiring, even shrinking, dis- 
position, she steadily preferred the quiet of the home-circle 



Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 209 

to all else the world could offer. A letter in which she 
describes her personal appearance is an index of her modest 
estimate of herself in general: ''I am a little bit of a 
woman, rather more than forty, as withered and dry as a 
pinch of snnft"; never very well worth looking at in my best 
days, and now a decidedly used-up article " 




BRACELET MADE IN IMITATION OF THE MANACLES OF A SLAVE. 

Presented to Mrs. Stowe by Harriet Elizabeth Georgiana, second 
Duchess of Sutherland, in 1853, at a reception at Stafford House, 
London. The liuK's bear, with certain anlislavery dates, the following 
inscription: " 56284S, March 19, 1853" (the date and number of 
signatures to the address by the women of England to the women 
of America). The sheets of this address were sent to all the Eng- 
lish colonies, and wherever British residents could be found. It 
was presented to Mrs. Stowe by the Duchess of Sutherland, and is 
now bound in twenty-four large volumes. 



INDEX 



American Sailors, 47-62. 

Barbary States, 70-79. 
Buccaneers, 72-76. 

Calhoun, 148-150, 155-156. 
California, 106-129. 
Clay, Henry, 152, 153, 154, 155, 159. 
Clermont, The, 95-105. 
Constitution, The, 47, 53, 55, 58- 

60, 75. 
Constitution of the U. S., 148-159. 

Dartmouth College, 144. 
Decatur, Capt., 49, 50, 75, 77, 79. 
Douglass, Frederick, 181-186. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 186-198, 199- 
202. 

France, 25-29, 43-46, 70. 
Fraunce's Tavern, 22. 
Fulton, Robert, 95-105. 

Georgetown, Old, 86-94. 
Grandpre, Louis, 30-42. 
Great Britain, 43-46, 62, 67, 82. 
Guerriere, 58. 

Inauguration of Washington, 18- 

24. 
Indians, 102-109, 136, 167. 
Jackson, Andrew, 62, 67. 
Jefiferson, Thomas, 26, 28. 

Key, Francis Scott, 68-71. 
Kidd, Capt., 80, 83-85. 

Lake Champlain, Battle of, 50, 51, 

.52. 
Lincoln, Early Life of, 166-180. 
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 186, 198. 
Livingston, 27-29. 



London Times, 57, 61. 

Louisiana Purchase, 25-29, 30-42. 

Madison, Dolly, 93-94. 
Madison, James, 43-46. 
Marque, Letters of, 82. 
Missions, 106-121. 
Mississippi River, 25-26. 
Morocco, 75. 
Mount Vernon, 3-16. 
Monroe Doctrine, 147. 
Monroe, James, 27. 

Napoleon, 27-29. 

New Orleans, Battle of, 62-67. 

New York, 160-165. 

Osceola, 130. 

Philadelphia, J^he, 75, 77, 79. 
Phillips Exeter Academy, 143. 
Pirates, 72-86. 
Privateering, 82. 

Slavery, Escape from, 181-186. 
Slavery, 199-202. 
Star-Spangled Banner, 68-71. 
Steamboat, 95-100. 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 203-209. 

Thomson, Charles, ig. 
Tripoli, 74, 75, 77. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin, 203-209. 

War of 1812, 43, 47-61. 
Washington, D. C, 86-94. 
Washington, George, 3-16, 18-24, 

92. 
Wasp, The, 59. 

Webster, Daniel, 138-147, 148-159. 
Whigs, 150, 152. 



211 



APR tl 1912 



"•'•' 'i i- i^. 



